


sufficiently advanced

by aliceinchucks



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ella Enchanted Fusion, Curses, M/M, Magic, Science, in which Carlos is Ella but you don't have to know what that means at all to follow this story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-06
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2020-08-10 08:06:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20132125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aliceinchucks/pseuds/aliceinchucks
Summary: The world of a scientist is logical. The world of a scientist follows certain universal rules and makes sense. In the world of a scientist, magic and curses and witches simply do not exist.Everyone forgot to tell Carlos this. It would have been nice to know that the curse he's had since the age of three that compels him to do whatever he's told was not a scientific possibility before he went and made a fool of himself in the academic world. But his half-abandoned quest to fix himself might just be picking up a new lead, landing him in a town that seems to follow its own rules.or, the WTNV-Ella Enchanted fusion nobody asked for except for me, in a sudden burning need





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should probably post this on a weekend or something but I got too excited on a Tuesday. I'll likely post the next chapter this weekend to make up for my mistakes.
> 
> Guys I'm pumped about this!! I might be the only one but this idea has implanted itself in my skull and so far I'm having a lot of fun with it. And like the tags suggest, you don't need to know anything about Ella Enchanted at all to enjoy this because I'm not bringing any characters over from that or anything (not a crossover!). But if you do know something about it, fun! That was my favorite book as a kid!
> 
> Small Warning for just this first chapter: it includes a brief scene involving a magically-induced urge toward suicide. It's at the end of the chapter, doesn't go into a lot of detail, and if you skip over it you'll still understand what's going on.

_ "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  
-Clarke's Third Law _

If you didn’t live in Glass and decided to visit for some godforsaken reason, the one thing that you would learn first thing without even asking is that the town was steeped in urban myth. Not all of its residents actually believed that there was a young boy trapped in everyone’s mirrors who would come out if you dripped a bead of blood onto the surface, or a variety of spiders that lived in the sewers and would lay their eggs in your skin if they bit you, or a beautiful witch who lived in the apartment building on Hadley and Maple, but they were quick to assure any outsider who stumbled into town that they did.

Carlos didn’t know about all that, but he did know that at least the witch thing was true. He knew because she cursed him when he was three years old. She also happened to be his aunt.

He wasn’t sure if he remembered it happening or if he’d just painted an image from what his mother had told him. More likely it was the latter, but regardless he could see it clearly: his tía Gianna with her head in her hands as she cried, his mama stroking her back. She’d just had a miscarriage, but Carlos hadn’t known what that was at the time.

“Mama, what’s wrong with her?” This was probably fabricated speech because his mother never actually included his exact words in the telling, but he knew he had said something or had been making some kind of racket, and this was what he heard when he played the scene for himself.

Gianna had lifted her head from her hands, her eyes flashing with sudden anger as she saw him lingering at the edge of the hallway, seeming offended by his very presence, his very existence. “Go away!” she cried.

“Gia,” his mother said, still rubbing her back in soothing motions. “He is only concerned.”

Carlos hadn’t moved, wide-eyed and frightened. His aunt flinched away from his mother’s hand as if the touch now stung, a wild light in her gaze. “You will go away.” Her voice was strange, at least in Carlos’ re-imagining. “You will obey me. You’re gonna have the most obedient kid in the neighborhood, Flor, won’t that be nice? You’ll always do as you’re told, you brat.”

Carlos ran, his mother begged, screamed, but from then on he always did as he was told. His second order came from his mother, commanding him never to tell another soul what had happened, lest they use it against him.

The first memory he had of his curse being more than just a bother was shortly after his baby half-sister Crystal was born, although the memory had nothing to do with her. It was easy to live life almost as if he were normal when he was a little boy and mostly just talked to his mama, whose orders were few and far between and always very carefully chosen. It was easy until he met Mindy.

Mindy and her parents moved into the apartment down the hall from Carlos' family. Mindy was loud and brash, often eliciting noise complaints from the neighbors, but what was most noticeable about her to Carlos was not that she talked a lot or at a high volume, but that she talked to _ him. _One evening Carlos and Mindy were hanging out in Carlos' room while Mindy's parents were out having a date night. He showed her his brand new set of colored pencils his abuela had given him on Christmas Eve.

“I’m not a very drawing kind of person, though,” said Carlos, who at this age was caught between two languages and was doing his best with both of them.

“You’re not?” Mindy cocked her head, running her pointer finger over the smooth wood of the pencils and making them roll in their slotted places. “Then give them to me.”

Carlos frowned. He didn’t much like to draw, true, but it was still a very nice gift and his abuela would probably be sad if he got rid of them. “You can have them,” he said without entirely deciding to say such a thing, and immediately felt both better and worse.

“Really?” Mindy asked in surprise. Carlos wanted to take it back, but didn’t. “Oh, thanks!”

He didn’t particularly want Mindy there anymore, but he didn’t know exactly what to do about it. He briefly considered going to find his mother and telling her what had happened, but he didn’t want to be that baby boy that ran to his mama, and besides, Mindy hadn’t actually done anything wrong, he didn’t think. She picked up the set of pencils and started taking them out one by one. Carlos told her he had to go to the bathroom and cried huddled up on the tile floor.

Unable to soften her sister's heart or force her to reverse the curse, Carlos' mother tracked down other witches over the years, those of a more benevolent nature. It took some doing, since magic was not a common practice these days, or a widely accepted one. But having Carlos stand in the center of a purifying circle, squeaky clean after a bath in scented oils, while an elderly man lit candles and swept clockwise around him with a broom did not fix the problem. Neither did chewing galangal root or reciting Psalm 7 while looking into a mirror.

"She just spoke?" Carlos asked when he was old enough to have a limited understanding of these things. "Just said the words, and it happened?"

"Yes," his mother said. "You ran away immediately, just like she wanted."

"But maybe I was just scared," said Carlos. "None of the witches we brought to the house ever just spoke. Maybe I ran because I wanted to, and then later she did something else to do the curse."

"That's smart thinking, _ mijo,_" she ruffled his dark hair, a line of worry between her brows. "Do you remember her doing something else?"

"No," Carlos said, disappointed in his own faulty young memory. Gianna was no longer speaking to the family, so it wouldn't do much good for his mother to ask. Carlos didn't even know where she lived. His mother didn't like to give him orders, but she forbade him from seeking her out, worried about what else she might do to him or make him do. It was a few months later that he started hearing whispers of the witch at the corner of Hadley and Maple, but by then the information did him no good. He tried to get around the order, thinking he could go to that street corner for some other reason, and if he happened to run into his aunt there, how could that be helped? But his actual intention was always in the back of his mind, voiding his efforts. He could hardly go within a block of the apartment complex without getting a searing headache.

Things got worse when he started school. The boys playing kickball at recess, upon seeing his skill level, almost immediately told him to go find something else to do, but that wasn’t the worst of it. It was his teacher.

It wasn’t her fault, really. She was just being a good teacher by saying things like, “use your knuckles to remember how many days are in each month of the year” and “write your ‘g’ like this.” The first thing was simple enough but irritating to be forced into, the second required careful, exact imitation of his teacher’s handwriting, and there were just so _ many _ similar thoughtless commands when he wasn’t used to anyone talking to him like that that it all got to be a bit much to keep track of.

“How was the last day of your first week at school, _ mijo _?”

Carlos thought of the lines creased into her forehead as she anxiously watched various witches try to heal her son, making her look older than she was, and said, “It was this girl Shannon’s turn to be the meteorologist today. That looked fun.”

“Meteorologist? That’s a big word.”

Carlos nodded. “Ms. Lazo said we could call them the weatherman if meteorologist was too much to say, but nobody does. They get to go outside and see what the weather is like and then they come back and put it on the board.”

“That does sound fun.” Carlos nodded again. “And you’re doing...alright?” His mother checked. “No one demands too much of you?”

“Not too much.” He only made it through half of the following week, though, before she found out that it was too much.

“Have you not had any homework yet, Carlitos?” she asked Wednesday evening while Carlos was rolling a toy train back and forth in front of Crystal with added sound effects, trying to make her laugh. So far he had been successful twice.

“I have, some days. We got some today.”

“Well,” his mother said gently, phrasing what she wanted from Carlos as a question like usual, “don’t you think you should do it before it gets too late? Have you gotten your homework done the other days? I haven’t seen you do it.”

“Oh, I do it on the bus home,” he said. “Or while waiting for the bus to get to school, if it’s a little late.”

“Oh.” Her brows raised. “Really? That’s fast. You haven’t needed any help with it?”

“It’s not that hard,” he shrugged, rolling the train up Crystal’s chubby arm. She batted it away with a smile.

“Worksheets can often be phrased in a very demanding way,” his mother continued, wiping her hands on her apron. “I don’t know, I guess I’ve just been thinking about your school…”

“You can’t tell teachers not to tell their kids to do anything just in case one of them is cursed with obedience.”

“No,” she conceded, a line between her brows. “Did your teacher tell you to do your homework right away? Is that why you do it on the bus?”

“She didn’t say. She just says homework, and then she’s like, do these questions in your workbook, or this worksheet, and then she says what to do on them.” He looked up as his mother lifted Crystal from the floor and settled her on her hip.

“And does that compel you to do it right away?”

Carlos looked at his lap. “I start getting the head-stomachache thing if I don’t start it pretty soon after she says that,” he admitted. “So I start it in the hallway as I walk to the bus.”

She nodded, like she had been afraid of that. “Carlos,” she said, “how would you feel about doing school at home?”

“But you have Crystal,” he pointed out. “And work.”

“You don’t need to worry about that, we can make it work. I just don’t want you to feel sick and overwhelmed every day. You seem so tired whenever you come home, I know there must be more you haven’t told me.”

“I don’t mean to seem that way,” Carlos mumbled.

“I’m not blaming you, Carlitos,” she said, ruffling his dark hair. “You are allowed to show however you feel. I just think this would be a good idea. We can do school differently.”

Carlos agreed to the idea, a little reluctantly but largely relieved, and from then on he was homeschooled. His mother had already started passing off Crystal to their abuela during the days while she worked, and now she switched to working nights instead.

Homeschooling further isolated Carlos from the rest of his peers. He still played with them in the neighborhood, but he was reluctant to get too close to any of them after Mindy, and knowing firsthand how bossy kids were even in sportive settings. By the time he was twelve, he was used to being bullied. He was a small homeschooler who didn’t talk to many people, had perpetually wild hair, and a voice that could be called sweet if you were being kind, wimpy if you weren’t. And many kids that age weren’t.

A few days before his thirteenth birthday, he was walking to Crystal’s dojo to pick her up from her judo class and saw a group of neighborhood boys who had been picking on him recently in a cluster across the street. Three of them. He pointedly looked away and kept walking.

“Ay, Carlitos!” He cringed internally but kept walking. What could have compelled his mom to call him that in public?

“Oh, are you not answering to that anymore, Carlitos?” One of them, Manning, asked as the three of them crossed the street. “Just when it’s your mommy calling?”

“Leave me alone,” Carlos said before he could stop himself, before he could think about what a mistake that was.

“Oh come on,” said Manning. “We’re just teasing. You take everything so serious.”

“I really don’t think you know me well enough to gauge whether that’s true or not.”

“I mean,” Manning said with a sneer, “no one really knows you, do they? ‘Cause you think you’re too good to talk to anyone. I bet if you died, no one would even notice.”

If only Carlos thought he was too good to talk to anyone. That would be a much simpler life. “Your observational skills are not my problem.”

“You could just kill yourself, and everyone would go on with their lives,” chimed in Grant with an original idea.

“That doesn’t sound like a productive use of my time,” Carlos said, trying to walk faster.

“I think it’d be very productive,” Manning said, “‘cause then we wouldn’t have to see a little freak walking around town anymore.”

“Oh? I thought you wouldn’t even notice.”

Manning frowned, clearly not pleased with his inconsistencies being pointed out to him. “Well, I guess there’s one way to find out. Just kill yourself.” He shrugged, like this was a casual thing to suggest, while all the air was punched from Carlos’ lungs.

It took him a moment to react, and then he shoved past Grant and broke into a run, his fingers already itching to find a razor or a knife or a gun. It wasn’t like he’d never considered it before. He heard laughter behind him and squeezed his eyes shut, knowing his feet had pointed him toward home, where he knew he could find at least one of those items. He tried to force himself into a halt once he was out of the boys’ line of sight, but could only manage a slower walk, as he pulled out the clunky banana phone his mother insisted he carry in his backpack with shaking hands.

She picked up on the second ring. “Carlos?–”

“Kidtoldmetokillmyself,” he let out in a single rush of air, his head swooping with a sudden intense bout of dizziness.

“Don’t kill yourself, Carlos,” she said immediately on a gasp. His head cleared of pain instantly, and he sagged, hands on his knees. He took a moment to just breathe in and out a few times, eyes closed, before he put the phone back to his ear.

“_ Dios mío, _ Carlitos. Don’t ever kill yourself, even if someone tells you to. I don’t know if that will work, but I just… I feel like I should say it anyway." She sounded shaken.

They'd tried experimenting with contradicting orders like that when he was younger. Ordinarily the most recent command overrode the previous, but when there were specific stipulations telling him not to obey one, it usually just made his symptoms worse until he did one thing or the other, so they'd stopped experimenting with those pretty quick.

He slumped against the wall. "Um. I… I have to go get Crystal." He was embarrassed, now that he had the capacity to think. It hadn’t exactly been his plan to let his mom know he was bullied.

"I'll pick her up. You go home. I mean, only go home right now if you want to. I would recommend going home."

He didn’t really want to go home. There had been a lot of situations in Carlos’ life where he didn’t feel safe, but this was… this rattled him in a different way. What if he hadn’t had his phone on him? What if he hadn’t been able to reach his mom?

His feet took him to the library. He couldn’t plan to just rely on her forever.

“Excuse me,” he said to the lady with her nose in a magazine at the circulation desk. “I need whatever books you have on magic.”


	2. Chapter 2

_ “If it doesn’t make sense, rather than fully reject it, it may be more worthwhile to remember it, but file it away for later consideration once more knowledge and experience is gained. This is particularly true of any intellectual knowledge within occult training as much esoteric and occult knowledge is not rational, logical, or scientifically provable.”  
_ _ -The Compleat Magical Path Magic Lessons _

The ‘books on magic’ available at Glass Public Library were largely folklore, but Carlos studied them until he could recite them by heart. He did his best to investigate the urban myths that made up the identity of his town. Granted, many of them weren’t really things that could be proven, like the story about the man and woman who were locked in a room at the top of the house at the end of Marion Avenue by the man’s father, insisting they not come out until they’d given him a grandchild. The couple had reportedly flung themselves out the window after a few months, but that was a story neither involving magic nor of much interest to Carlos. Of a bit more interest was the story of a terrible earthquake that had rocked the town seventy years ago yet showed up on no seismograph, but still, unprovable at this point.

Nothing emerged from his mirror when he pricked his finger and dripped blood onto the glass. When he set rat traps and put the rodents in a terrarium with spiders he found crawling near the sewers, nothing alarming happened to the rats, although Carlos wasn’t sure if spiders bit rats in the first place. He couldn’t find any books that would tell him so. The pond near the elementary school that supposedly drowned everyone who attempted to swim in it proved to contain entirely normal water when he took a sample and tested it with a kit he bought at Home Depot, although he had to stop his investigation short of actually swimming in the pond because someone had told him not to when he was five.

His mother became worried about his activities but expressed her concern only through soft questioning, so Carlos continued with what he was doing. It was several months of alternating between hands-on research and scouring libraries before he found an actual instructional book on magic, three towns over.

The book contained much general theorizing and an emphasis on becoming attuned with one’s Higher Self. Carlos wanted to find spells, potion recipes, incantations, so he flipped through until he saw some beginner ones near the back of the book.

Of the tools listed, the only one he was sure he had on hand in the house was a candle, so that narrowed down his experiments for the time being quite a bit. He fetched one from the cupboard along with a box of matches and sat on his bedroom floor, the candle in front of him. He didn’t know if it was soy like the book recommended, but it would have to do.

“Fire of flame, air to nourish, running water melting wax, solid wax of earth,” he muttered, lighting the candle and peering into its flame. He needed to direct his intent at the candle, and his intent in this case was to shut his own bedroom door. The door was mostly shut already, so it seemed simple enough.

He stared and thought hard until the candle was halfway burned down, and the door remained open. Carlos squeezed his eyes shut, frustration pulling sound from his throat. He had avoided reading too far past the general principles at the front of the book, sure that the pages must be riddled with orders, but it seemed he had little choice. Snuffing the candle between his fingers, he flipped all the way back to the beginning and prepared for a wild ride.

Per the book's instruction, he spent time in his favorite spot in nature, which, having lived his whole life in a town surrounded by other towns, he supposed was the park. He collected stones and flowers and leaves. He went barefoot for three weeks straight to become more in tune with the earth. He set out a fresh cup of water from the pond near the elementary school by his bedside every morning and a small sachet of dried lavender and calendula under his pillow every night. He wrote down daily what it was he wanted to accomplish in twelve-word statements. He studied the history of magic as best he could, with the limited literature he could find, as well as the fundamentals of practicing it. He worked daily on visualization, meditation, and alternating between states of consciousness at will, which he didn’t think he fully understood and wasn’t sure he had much success with. He did everything the book said to do and more, in an effort to master the principles it held in its pages.

By the time he was fourteen, the door to his bedroom remained stubbornly open. The sugar cookies he made did not prevent his hair from becoming greasy for a week. The penny he rubbed in cinnamon oil stayed stubbornly grounded. And most importantly, no matter what curse-removing rituals he cobbled together from the supposed magical properties of various substances, he still did everything he was told.

One unforeseen positive effect of his efforts was that the kids who used to pick on him mostly left him alone now. In Glass, having the appearance of being a practitioner of magic instilled a kind of prudent wariness in people as long as they didn’t know you weren’t actually successful at it.

But you know what did keep Carlos’ hair from being greasy for a week? The sodium lauryl sulfate in his shampoo. His bedroom door closed if he applied force to it. And any coin flew into the air if he threw it. He became fed up with magic and his inability to use it to do what he could easily accomplish by other means.

“You’re still doing that magic stuff?” his sister leaned against his doorway, watching warily as a ball of tinsel floated a few inches above the PVC pipe clutched in Carlos’ hand.

“It’s not magic,” said Carlos, moving the pipe in a slow circle and grinning when the tinsel orb followed. “It’s science.”

Crystal shrugged. “You can call it what you want.”

“No, it’s not magic,” Carlos insisted, the ball dropping along with his smile as he lowered the pipe. “It _works_. It’s static electricity! I gave the pipe a negative charge by rubbing it on my head, and then when the tinsel hit it, it picked up that charge, so it repelled away because it has the same charge. I’m levitating it! I’m trying to figure out how to make it last longer.”

“Is that why your hair looks like that?” Crystal asked. “Thought it was just your usual style.”

“Do you like it?” Carlos rubbed the pipe through his hair to charge it up again, taking care to muss it up even more this time.

“So are you going to try to get rid of your curse through science now?”

Carlos frowned at her.

“Oh come on, I’m not dumb.” She rolled her eyes. “I know that’s why you’ve been trying to learn magic. So are you?"

"I hadn't thought about it," he said honestly–Carlos was always honest these days, often to his regret–and picked up the ball of tinsel, replacing it on the pipe. "It's just nice to be doing something that actually works for me. I doubt you can reverse something magical with science."

They watched as the tinsel rose into the air again. Carlos stood in the center of the room, entranced by the hovering little silver mass, and Crystal started to leave.

"Looks the same from where I'm standing," she tossed over her shoulder.

-

“So, Carlos, what interests you about our program here?”

It was a simple question. Carlos sifted through the notecards in his mind to remind himself exactly what this specific doctoral program was all about, he’d applied to so many. He’d only repeated it all to himself a thousand times on his drive over and the several days leading up to this interview.

“I’m very interested in the study of the mind, and particularly I find your emphasis on understanding pain to be admirable, and potentially quite useful.”

“Potentially.”

Carlos folded his hands under the desk and then unfolded them, then wiped them on his pants. “Well. Yes.”

The admissions director lowered his reading glasses to peer at the file on his desk. “It looks like after you graduated high school, it was several years before you attended a university. Any particular reason for this long interlude?”

“Well, I was homeschooled my entire education, and I wasn’t sure that… traditional academia would be for me, but I had such a passion for learning and for science that eventually just pursuing that interest on my own wasn’t quite enough; I didn’t feel like I was getting as much out of it as I could. So I tried college, and it… well, it worked out.”

“Quite well, I should say.” He glanced over at what might have been Carlos’ transcript.

“Yes, sir.” Jumping headfirst into an environment where every authority figure in his life delighted in doling out orders and every lab procedure consisted almost of nothing else, he had become a perfectionist by necessity.

“Now, I believe you when you say you have an interest in the mind. You’ve published a few papers on what you call, the 'science of magic,’ where I believe you mention something about testing the limits of the human mind, is that correct?”

Carlos swallowed, trying to summon saliva back into his throat. “I don’t think that was in my application.”

“We are a graduate institute dedicated to research.” The man regarded him over the tops of his glasses. “Surely you wouldn’t expect us to shirk our responsibilities in that area when it comes to looking into candidates for our program, would you?”

“No, sir.”

“Well?”

Carlos’ heart was already sinking. This would not be the first school to turn him down once this topic came up. He could still hear the muffled snickers of the admissions board at the first interview he showed up to for a school in southern California, a whole table full of people who had marked him down as a pseudoscientist before he even arrived. “I did write a couple papers in that vein before college, yes, but they were just part of an attempt on my part to understand magic more fully, and how it relates to the natural world, kind of a failed attempt at that, and in any case, I didn’t know at the time…”

“That people would read them?”

Carlos stared at his hands. There was a certain level of honesty that one was expected to meet in an interview, but saying what he’d been about to say would almost certainly be going beyond it, which was, he didn’t know at the time that scientists didn’t typically believe in magic. It had been a rather jarring realization, leaving his home that accepted it as a fact of life and landing in a college environment where such things were considered barbaric myth.

He said nothing, his heart hammering and already thinking about getting back to his apartment, taking off his tie, maybe throwing up a little. The admissions director apparently took his silence as confirmation and tapped his stack of papers on the desk to straighten them. “Well. I respect that you own up to the work that you have put out into the world, even if reluctantly. You seem to be highly motivated, and we have been encouraged to diversify the program...” Carlos looked up. Was he about to be accepted because he was Latino? Before he could even work out how he felt about that, the man continued. “Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to have someone in the lab with a more mystical, open-minded perspective.”

“Oh.” A more mystical perspective? “I feel like I should tell you that I don’t actually _ practice _ magic myself–”

“Are you rejecting my offer of a spot in the program?” The man’s eyes twinkled with good humor that Carlos had definitely not detected there until this precise moment. Carlos snapped his mouth shut, because really, he needed to know when to stop.

“No. No, not at all, not rejecting, I am accepting.”

“Good,” the director said simply. “We’ll be glad to have you, Carlos.”

-

“So I’m...poking rats in the foot?”

“Yes.” His supervisor Myrna nodded definitively. “Any questions?”

“I suppose not other than that, no.”

“Great!” She smiled. “You should be good to go. I’ll be at the other end, the neuropathy station, if you come up with any.”

He hunched down to peer into the clear box and got to work. 

For the first time since he was thirteen, he was working with rats. Torturing rats, to be precise. His job was to inject their paws with a drug extracted from red seaweed called carrageenan that was usually used to thicken and preserve food, but in this case was used to inflame rat feet and make them swell up really big. Each rat had been left in there for a while without food, and periodically a lever would come down that the rat could either press or ignore. If they pressed it, they got food, but Carlos was supposed to poke them in the foot with a little stick. If they didn’t press it, they didn’t get food, but they also didn’t get poked. Across the lab, Myrna was conducting little rat surgeries, tying knots in their sciatic nerve, and the point was to see which type of pain was worse: Carlos’ chemically induced inflammation or Myrna’s neuropathy. The rats were also injected with one of two kinds of analgesic to test which painkiller was most effective on each type of pain.

Carlos apologized to them every time they chose the food, which was almost every time. He felt a little silly at first, saying sorry to a rat, but over time he felt a sort of bond with the little guys. An abusive bond, but still. Then there were those special rats who never figured out what the lever was for, and just let it hit them gently in the face every time it came down. They kind of threw off the experiment and gave Carlos no data to work with, but they were his favorites.

His routine became comforting. Myrna was content to not talk much except to discuss results, so he didn’t usually have to worry about a lot when he was in the lab. The rest of campus was a bit more of a minefield. Of course, when the admissions director said ‘we’ll be glad to have you,’ he was not speaking for everyone. Most people kept to themselves, naturally, but in settings of academia there always existed those who were antagonistic not in the outright manner of the bullies of Carlos’ childhood, but the more subdued yet pointed commentary of those who considered themselves an exemplar of their field and therefore someone with the right and privilege of gatekeeping it. 

“Congratulations on your presentation,” one such student said while the two were grabbing coffee in the student lounge at the end of the six-month study. He was particularly dedicated to the institution’s philosophy of research and had apparently conducted his own on Carlos. Carlos could only guess that he didn’t much like what he found. “I’m a bit surprised any of the rats survived the study, with you around.”

“What am I going to do with them, Noah?” Carlos asked. “Eat them?”

“Perhaps not. Maybe they were too valuable for that, lending you their power.”

“A lab rat would be an interesting familiar, but a whole load of them at once seems excessive.”

Noah smiled close-lipped. “I suppose you would know.”

“Having studied the history and use of familiars extensively, yes, I should think so.”

Noah’s smile turned a bit impatient, but he maintained his pompous composure admirably. “Just save us the pretense and admit outright you’re a witch, it would do us all a favor in trying to navigate a conversation with you.”

Carlos sipped his coffee in a habitual, irritated compulsion to delay the inevitable. “Alright, I’m a witch.”

“Are you really?” He seemed disconcerted by the response and maybe a touch nervous, which was fun, and made having to honestly answer his question a bit disappointing.

“No!” Carlos said, ready to leave this conversation. The presentation with Myrna had put enough strain on his nerves for the day, and he wanted to just relish in the fact that it was done. Where had she gone off to, anyway? “I don’t practice magic and I’m not a witch, and I’ve never claimed either.”

“Maybe not,” said Noah, “but a word of advice? If you want to be taken seriously in the scientific community, don’t even use the words ‘witch’ or ‘magic.’”

“Oh, thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.” Although Noah used it first, he thought childishly. But of course he _ would _keep it in mind, damn it all, because what was he even doing here if he had no desire to be taken seriously in the scientific community?

Carlos got on with his life without missing the words too much, put every ounce of his heart and soul into his lectures and labs that his professors and advisors demanded of him for the next few years, and around the time his advisor started hassling him to pick a dissertation topic and get on with his prospectus, Noah said something else that would even more profoundly change his life. And the funny thing was, it wasn’t even an order. Nor was it directed at Carlos.

“Johari was telling me there was a big stir in the earth sciences department this morning,” he said, once again in the student lounge. His friend (Carlos wasn’t sure of his name–Andy? Andrei?) was seated across from him at the only table. “She said their seismographs were going crazy, like off the chart readings. Apparently the epicenter is some middle of nowhere point on the map, but it’s close enough that there’s no way we wouldn’t feel it from here. Significantly. But there’s nothing. Clearly.”

“Weird,” said Andrei.

“Quite,” said Noah, pretentiously.

“Are they sending anyone to check it out?” asked Carlos, who had just blown in to grab a cup of coffee and blow back out. His heart rate had taken up an odd pattern as he listened, even though it was probably nothing. It was just a bit too reminiscent of one of his old legends to immediately brush off. The supposed catastrophic earthquake in Glass in 1921, the one that showed up on no monitoring equipment. Equal phenomenon, but opposite.

The two men looked up as if just noticing him. “I don’t know.” Noah shrugged. “Probably not. I’m guessing it was just faulty equipment.”

“They’ve got like a dozen seismographs in earth sciences, don’t they?”

“I guess.” So much for inquisitive minds. Carlos downed the rest of his coffee and tossed the paper cup. “You wouldn’t have anything to do with it, would you, Carlos?” Though still a bit of a snob, Noah had mellowed considerably over the years, and there was an edge of friendly nostalgia to the teasing now.

“I’ll see you later.”

“You want to investigate an earthquake?”

Carlos stood in front of his advisor and the head of the earth sciences department, in the latter’s office. His advisor had been a bit confused as to why Carlos wanted to meet with the two of them together, but had gone along with it curiously.

“I want to investigate drastic seismic shifts that failed to physically move the earth beneath our feet, yes. Were you planning on sending anyone?”

“You want us to send you into a potential disaster area,” confirmed the head of the earth sciences department.

“You’re in behavioral neuroscience,” pointed out his advisor.

“I have studied earth sciences, just not at this institution. And it’s not as though there’s an earthquake going on right _ now _, right?”

“Actually…” the head of the earth sciences department looked off to the side, her brows drawn together. “The monitors haven’t stopped going off. We’re considering just dismantling them.”

“Oh.” Carlos blinked. “And you don’t find that… weird?”

“I find it very weird.”

“I would love to go there and see what’s going on, if anything. I know it’s not my current field–”

“You know, I’ve seen your work, Carlos. Noah Yom posted some of it on a student forum a few years ago.”

Carlos tried very hard not to groan. “Has everyone on this campus read my gap year papers?” Never mind that he’d taken off a considerable bit more than a year.

“Your attempts to reconcile science and unexplained phenomena, what some would refer to as magic, explored a rationale I have not often seen explored.”

He stared at his shoes. “They’ve been largely discredited.”

She nodded. “Rightly so, they were rambling and often childish.” Had she agreed to meet him just to make blunt comments about papers he’d written a decade ago? Did no one have anything better to do around here? “Investigating strange phenomena is something of an avocation of yours, is that right?”

He met her eyes. Hers were considering. “I suppose so.”

“Alright,” she said, seeming to settle the matter. “If it’s alright with your advisor, we’ll send you on behalf of the university. Your stipend will remain the same as it is now, although I can’t imagine you’ll be gone long enough for it to make much difference.”

His advisor shrugged, looking a little amused by the whole situation. “Try and pick a dissertation topic while you’re out there, will you? Maybe getting out of the lab for a bit will help clear your head.”

“Take one of our seismographs with you. You know how to read one, right?”

He nodded, reeling. 

“I’ll draw up the paperwork.”

“Thank you, Dr. Kayali.”

She waved him off. “Please, nobody else wants to do this. And Carlos?”

“Yes?”

“Try not to die in an earthquake.”

Carlos didn’t go on many road trips for any extended period of time, and when he did he always had to be careful not to look at billboards, or he’d be swerving to take every exit that had a burger joint or a roadside attraction and requesting several appointments for bariatric surgery.

According to the monitor and his GPS, he was getting close to where the supposed epicenter of the tectonic shifts was located, and the earth had continued to be as still as a held breath. The stylus on the seismograph in his passenger seat hadn’t stopped jumping wildly, but he _ was _ driving on a bumpy road.

The maybe-foolish hope that this actually turned out to be _ something, _ Carlos wasn’t sure what, hummed in his veins as he drove. Some display of real magic with power beyond what the hedge-and-kitchen witches his mother had ushered into their home could ever accomplish, the kind of power Carlos had been cut off from his whole life, even knowing it lived at the corner of Hadley and Maple just a few blocks from his home.

This was undoubtedly the middle of the desert, and had been for some time now. White line fever dulled his senses so that he didn’t notice for a while that there weren’t any white lines anymore, the road instead marked by a colorful strip of what appeared to be a tile mosaic. As soon as he became cognizant of this, he saw a small sign on the shoulder that simply read ‘turn left.’ There was no intersecting road or exit onto which to turn left.

Of course, Carlos turned left.


	3. Chapter 3

_“It may be the case that this is the first time you’ve been confronted with someone who will challenge your views of reality - I have experienced fear of people, and seen this fear induced in others around me, in reaction to meeting a person who is a little ‘different’. Working through this fear I have sometimes discovered this person actually has a lot to teach, and is actually rather wise - although sometimes not in conventional ways.”  
_-_T__he Compleat Magical Path Magic Lessons_

Turning left indeed seemed to have been the thing to do (not that he had any choice in the matter), since a glance at the monitor told him the change in direction was bringing him ever nearer the epicenter. He was a bit too wired to think too much of that. A new road eventually appeared under his tires to replace the old one, marked by the same mosaic in what might have even been an immediate continuation of where it left off. It was difficult to tell, Carlos not being entirely sure what the artwork was depicting, but it was quite vibrant for an installation exposed to the desert elements.

The road curved, and on the shoulder, where there might have been yellow caution signs, were tall, dark figures. Carlos braked, convinced for a moment that they were people, but when they didn’t move he inspected them more closely to see that they were only cut-out silhouettes of people, seeming pained in their posture. This appeared to be quite the artistic area. The simple road marker reading ‘Route 800’ a half mile later seemed jarringly drab in contrast.

Eventually he came to a town. At first glance it was unremarkable except that there was no town marked on the GPS or the monitor’s map, but he supposed that no map was comprehensive, and after miles of creative road adornments he had been expecting some sign of the human life responsible for them.

It was quiet and dark. Carlos drove, paying more attention to the monitor than his surroundings. He drove until his car was as close as he could get to his destination while driving, and then he parked. The seismograph was having a proper fit as he took it out of the passengers’ seat and followed it the rest of the way, until he was standing squarely on top of the epicenter. He was in a park. He set down the contraption on still, quiet grass and the stylus continued to jump in wide, choppy arcs. Carlos watched it for a minute.

“I don’t know what I expected,” he said to the park.

He was answered by a shout. Carlos grabbed his chest as if he had a southern Baptist woman’s pearls. There was another shout, and this time he was able to make out both the word and the shouter, an older lady on a bench a few paces away who looked inclined to actually clutch pearls. “Interloper!” she was yelling.

On the sidewalk across the street, a man in a dark coat bustling by echoed the sentiment. “Interloper!”

“What??” The sheer absurdity of such a thing stunted Carlos’ vocabulary. The woman just frowned disapprovingly at him and the man kept walking as if neither of them were there, so Carlos picked up his seismograph with dignity and walked it quickly back to his car. In the morning he would see if he could find any science-minded authorities, maybe at a school or a local government office, and ask if they were aware of this phenomenon and what they made of it. But now it was late, and he was tired and frazzled and starting to wonder if he was imagining things.

The man behind the desk at the only motel he could find thankfully did not yell strange things at him. He didn’t say anything at all, actually. Silently proffered key in hand, Carlos took his things up to his single room and set them at the foot of the bed. The furnishings were simple and adequate, quite to Carlos’ taste. He sat on the edge of the duvet, wishing he could sense something about this place, if it held the answers he needed. He would have to find out quickly enough to not waste the university’s money on his own personal side project. But he wasn’t the type of person to be able to sense things about any place, and he didn’t want to get his hopes up. Strange natural phenomena did not necessarily equal strong magic power, since he’d never _really _been able to prove his half-concocted theory that the strangeness of his own town was caused by his aunt’s presence. Hell, he’d never even been able to prove the strangeness of his own town was more than just stories. And strong magic power did not necessarily equal a solution to his curse. No, he would need to keep his hopes very much in check.

The next morning he was yanked violently into the waking world by a blaring alarm. He stumbled blearily down the stairs, heart beating too fast and muttering to himself that he should have done a bit more research to find a hotel that wasn’t going to immediately set itself on fire with electrical wiring problems.

When he got outside he noticed first that he was either the only occupant of the motel, or the only one who responded to alarms by evacuating the building, and second that the noise was every bit as loud out of doors as it had been inside. He walked a few paces down the sidewalk in his bare feet before realizing that the sound wasn’t coming from the motel at all. It seemed to be all around.

Brow deeply furrowed in the kind of confusion that is only perfected by intense sleepiness, he made his way down the block to the first establishment that appeared to be open, a diner. The few occupants looked up at the jingle of the bell.

As soon as it had begun, the alarm stopped. His ears rung in the after-quiet.

“What,” he said flatly, “was that.” When no one seemed immediately inclined to answer, he approached the balding man behind the counter, his irritable tiredness perhaps making him a bit more pushy than he would normally be. “Was that some kind of disaster siren?” he asked the man. “Like–oh, shit, was it meant to warn of an earthquake?”

“An earthquake?” The proprietor’s eyes darted to and from his face almost as if he didn’t want to look at him too long, or be seen talking to him directly. “I can’t remember the last time Night Vale had an earthquake.”

“Night Vale. That’s the name of this town?”

The man paused in his vigorous scrubbing of the glass clutched in his hand. “Maybe it was to herald your arrival. To warn us.”

Carlos almost turned on his heel at that, but enough about his experience so far had been just odd enough to give him pause, thinking maybe the man wasn’t actually joking. "You don't actually do that when people come in from out of town, do you?”

He shrugged. “Not that I’ve ever heard. Maybe the world’s about to come to a violent end.”

“Well, you don’t need to just make guesses!”

“Hey, you! Interloper!”

Carlos whirled around so fast his hip hit the counter, hard. He hissed between his teeth, eyes darting around to locate his latest aggressor.

“Oh! No, I’m sorry!” A woman with a short-cut bob and choppy bangs was half-standing from her seat, her eyes wide. “It was just supposed to be a joke, but I can see now how that couldn’t have possibly been clear! See, I’m what they’d call an interloper too.”

Carlos rubbed grumpily at his hip bone. “Why must anyone be called that?”

“It’s just their way.” She shrugged. “I don’t think they mean any actual harm.” She eyed the proprietor, who was giving her the same shifty look he’d given Carlos. “No one’s outright attacked me yet, anyway.” 

They were drawing some mild attention, although dawn was only just breaking and the atmosphere in the diner was bleary enough that any sort of activity at this hour was probably likely to draw attention. Carlos glanced between her and the rest of them, apparently hovering close enough to her little table to warrant her asking, “Do you want to sit here?”

“Um.” 

The woman smiled encouragingly. “Come on, sit!” she insisted, which made the decision for him. “We interlopers have to stick together.”

She sat back down and Carlos sat across from her. He didn’t have any money on him to order anything. He didn’t have anything on him at all. Now that he had technically sat, he could leave if he wanted to, but besides the fact that it would be awkward, she did have him curious. “So how long have you been here?” he asked. “Just passing through?”

“Oh, I’m staying for now, but it hasn’t been long. A week and a half.”

“Here for anything specific?”

“Research,” she said, capturing Carlos’ full attention. “Just doing some recon for my company, getting the lay of the socioeconomic climate of this place to see if we’d be a good fit.”

“Ah,” he said. “And what have you found so far?”

“There’s potential. I’m tentatively hopeful.”

“And what does your company do?”

“Among other things? Oranges.”

“Oh,” he said, wondering what exactly the socioeconomic condition of an area needed to be in order to plant an orange business.

“And you?” she asked, eyeing his sweatpants which were unraveling at the bottom because they were so long he stepped on them when he walked, his bare feet, and the oversized, nondescript t-shirt he’d worn to bed. There was an amused glint to the assessment.

“Research as well,” he said. “Did you know that this town is currently experiencing tectonic shifts at a 9.6 on the Richter scale?”

“I did not know that.”

“That’s a tenth of a point higher than the magnitude of the biggest earthquake in recorded history,” he said with a kind of self-preserving detachment. “That one killed almost two thousand people in Chile.”

"This one seems a bit kinder."

"Yes," he sighed wearily. The woman laughed at him, a pleasant sound lower than her speaking voice that seemed to come from deep in her chest. Carlos relaxed a little and let himself chuckle too. It really was kind of funny if he thought about it. "Do you know of anyone else who might be looking into this type of thing, or where the people who need to be informed are located if no one is?"

"Ah!" She straightened, bright. "You've asked the right person. There's the community college, and I guess if you really want to you could let City Council know, but that probably wouldn't be met with a great response based on what I've learned about them in my brief time here. Then there's always the people at the Pulsar Development Facility."

"The–what?"

She grinned, enjoying this too much. "You know, the research center that guzzles up a majority of the town's income in a valiant effort to create an entirely synthetic pulsar."

“As in–you are talking about a star?”

She nodded. “The town’s hoping to replace the whale oil lamps currently lighting the football stadium.”

Well, naturally. Carlos needed to go back to bed. Maybe for a few days. Not even going to touch that, he sighed, “I guess I’ll start with the community college.”

“Smart man.” She nodded sagely.

“I guess I should probably get dressed while I’m at it.”

“Oh, are you not dressed?” She winked, and Carlos felt his face grow warm. “Hey, do you want to grab dinner tonight?” she asked suddenly. “I don’t run into a lot of people questioning why things are the way they are around here. It’s kind of refreshing.”

“Oh. Um–” She gave him that encouraging smile again, a smile both jarring and beautiful in its sheer brilliance. Carlos made a quick decision. “Alright.”

"Great! Meet me back here at seven. I gotta go run some errands now." She stood.

"Wait, I didn't get your name! I'm Carlos."

"Nice to meet you, Carlos." She gave a little half wave on her way out the door. "I'm Lauren!”

His trip to the community college was disheartening. Upon arrival, he asked the front office where he could find the earth sciences division, thinking they would be most interested in what he had to say and best equipped to deal with it, only to be told that the earth sciences building had been condemned as unsafe and left abandoned. When asked if he wished to speak to the transient living in a recycling closet in the building, he respectfully declined.

He was then referred to a Dr. Hertzwell, associate professor of ‘Approved Sciences’, whatever that was, who seemed downright bored with what he had to say.

“Okay, so?” were her exact words.

“Sorry, I–” Carlos stammered, thrown by such indifference, though he was starting to get the sense that he really shouldn’t have been. “Were you aware of this already?”

“I was not,” she answered, swiveling back and forth slowly in her desk chair. “We don’t have– what did you call it? Your seis-ma-whatzit? We don’t have any of those at this college, so there’s not really any way for me to know there’s an earthquake going on other than just by _feeling _it, y’know? Isn’t that good enough? Doesn’t seem like we’re having one right now.”

Carlos stuttered through the beginning of a reply about four times before giving up and seeing himself out.

After a day of a few similarly frustrating encounters and inconclusive readings, he returned to the diner at seven precisely. Lauren wasn’t there yet, so he went ahead and found a seat. He probably spent a bit too long hovering in the middle of the floor debating the benefits of sitting at the bar versus getting a booth, but eventually decided in favor of the casual setup of the bar, with less need for prolonged eye contact. Lauren was definitely the friendliest person he had met in this town so far, but she had an intense focus that was a little much head-on.

Now that he wasn’t freshly woken up, he had more brain capacity to better take in the atmosphere of the diner. It was decorated to give off an old-fashioned feel, with green neon pouring through the large windows from the brightly lit front of the building and tinting the interior and everyone in it a touch seasick. The air had a sort of hot rubber scent to it. He ordered a turkey club and french fries from the balding man.

The radio was crackling through staticky speakers on the ceiling. It seemed to be some kind of news show, though the tone was more languorous than most news reports, and once he actually took a moment to listen to the words, stranger. He would normally assume it was a parody of a news broadcast, but in this town, nothing seemed out of the question. The authenticity of the show was cemented a few minutes in.

_"News has reached the studio that in an interesting development, our newest visitor, a man who just arrived to our sleepy little hamlet last night and whose purpose here we can only make wild guesses about at this time, is meeting up with our town's only other visitor, Lauren Mallard, who has been with us for a week. The two agreed to meet at the Moonlite All-Nite Diner, next to the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex on Route 800, and just down the street from the still-unnamed motel where both of our visitors are currently staying. Do the two know each other? Are they trying to get to know each other? Are they perhaps plotting our town’s demise? Is it a date? Listeners, that is _none of our business. _Those are not the questions we need to be asking, and we should not even act like we want to know. What _is _our business, and the question we should be asking is, why won't you name your motel, Misha? What is going on there? You are bringing down the entire street."_

"What?" Carlos said aloud, a word he sensed he was going to have to become accustomed to passing his lips. "How does he–how could he _possibly _know that? Is that really the most newsworthy thing going on around here?"

“You clearly haven’t been listening for long.” Lauren slid onto the stool beside him.

"Why does the station think anyone would care what we're doing?" He recalled all the stares and shouts he'd received just by existing here so far and amended. "Actually, yeah. Scratch that."

The proprietor came over and Lauren ordered a chicken tender basket with a side of salt cubes. Carlos had seen the turkey club sandwich on the menu and had barely even glanced at the rest, but he did now, and salt cubes were actually among the less outlandish side options. "Any luck with your earthquake investigation?" Lauren asked.

He shook his head, pulling his gaze away from the section of the sloppily written menu that he was almost certain read ‘invisible entrees’. "Not only was no one aware of the seismic shifts, they didn't even _care _once I told them. I guess it's not as groundbreaking as two people from out of town meeting up for dinner. No pun intended." 

"Hey, don't give up!" she said cheerfully, although she said most everything cheerfully. "Just because the people who should care don't, doesn't mean no one will. I bet if you told the radio station, they'd let everyone know."

"Well… I don't know if _everyone _needs to know. It's not as if it's actually affecting anyone, I guess. It's just frustrating that people who should be keeping an eye on this sort of thing don't even want to know about it."

Lauren hummed sympathetically, and he made the mistake then of tuning back in to what the man on the radio was saying. "_I must admit I am anxious about this upcoming contract negotiation. If you've been listening to this show for a while you know this is always a big source of stress for me in my professional life. Listeners, please pray for me tomorrow in your bloodstone circles. I would greatly appreciate it."_

It would have been nice if polite words like "please" softened direct orders, but unfortunately in Carlos' case they had no effect. “Bloodstone circles?” he asked with a touch of alarm. That sounded… well, it sounded like magic. “Do you have a bloodstone circle?”

She snorted. “No, of course not."

“Do you know someone who does?”

“Uh, literally any other person in this godforsaken–I mean, quaint, little town? I wouldn’t worry about it too much. It sounds barbaric, but it’s probably harmless.”

Not worrying about it was a luxury Carlos did not possess. He would have to find one by tomorrow. It sounded like a possible lead, anyway, so investigating wouldn’t be too big of a burden.

“_Attention, listeners,_” said the voice on the radio. “_Here is a list of words. Memorize them. It will not now, nor ever, be repeated. Typically, lists such as this one have been provided for you for your safety by the Sheriff’s Secret Police, but this edition is brought to you specially by Jo-Ann Fabrics! Jo-Ann Fabrics: Don't touch the cambric. Here is the list_.” 

Carlos didn’t even have time to question what was going on this time, because then the man was rattling off a series of seemingly unrelated words. Carlos scrambled for the pen in his pocket and started scribbling onto the corner of his paper-lined tray.

“You’re actually writing it down?”

Carlos ignored her. He had to memorize this list. He was not a fan of this particular radio station.

“Y’know, you’re not going to be able to keep that.”

“Hm?”

“Your pen. You can’t have those here.”

“Mhm.” The voice on the radio had just said orange julius, he was pretty sure.

The list ended, but Carlos didn’t relax. His eyes flicked up and down the list aimlessly, trying to burn the words into his mind. But it would not be wise to stay here, with the radio playing. It seemed every other word out of the host’s mouth was an absurd order; who knew what he would hear if he kept sitting at this bar?

“I have to go,” he muttered, still analyzing the list.

“So soon? Where to?”

“I–don’t know. You think I should tell the radio station?” He didn’t exactly want to, especially considering the station was his reason for leaving the diner in the first place, but Lauren had told him not to give up about getting someone to listen to what he had to say about the earthquake, so of course he couldn’t. And her best advice had been to approach the station. Hopefully he could find a way to avoid listening to the actual broadcast.

“Oh. Well, sure.” She shrugged and took a long sip of whatever she was drinking. “I'd prepare myself talking to him, though. Cecil is a fine radio host, well-liked by most. Some might consider him dramatically opinionated and overbearing, but I'm sure that's just part of his charm!”

“Wow.” Carlos whistled low. “Y'know, you can just say the guy's a dick.”

“No,” she said, which sounded like the start of a sentence to Carlos, and then laughed and ate some chicken.

Carlos avoided the radio station as long as he could. He did everything else he could think of first, starting with measuring for radioactive materials around town, since seismic activity could sometimes be caused by nuclear testing, and who knew what they were getting up to over at that 'pulsar development center.' This turned out to be more than enough of a distractor, since the very first reading he took showed levels of radiation high enough to damage the internal organs of not only every resident of the town, but every living thing in the surrounding desert for a good few miles. 

A strange mix of fear, excitement, and relief simmered in his chest as he stared at the LCD numbers on his Geiger counter. On the one hand, being in the middle of such dangerous levels of radiation couldn’t be a _good _thing, but considering the citizens of Night Vale were in fact, not all dead, he wondered if there might be something magical to it. And it quelled the perhaps self-centered worry that he would find nothing scientifically out of the ordinary in this desert and look like a fool to his advisor and Dr. Kayali.

The readings spiked higher the closer he got to what definitely looked to be the radio tower, so eventually Carlos gave into the patient pressure of Lauren’s indefinite order not to give up, his own curiosity, and the powers of fate that Carlos wasn’t even sure he believed in, and went inside.

He stood in the dim entryway repeating the weird list of words the radio had told him to memorize on a loop in his head for a good minute before a young woman with excellent posture approached him, eyes bright and customer-service friendly. “Can I help you?”

“Yes–I just wanted to let the station know...I mean, I’m a scientist–”

“Are you Carlos?” She held out her hand to shake.

He took it. “Yes,” he said uncomfortably.

“Nice to meet you! I’m Dana. You’ll want to speak to Cecil.”

“That’s the radio show host, right? I don’t want to bother him, I can just tell you, if that would–”

“Nonsense, it’s no bother!” she said with a wave of her hand as if the potential inconvenience was hers to dismiss rather than Cecil’s. “He’s about to hit a break, I’ll lead you up there.”

“O-kay.” She took him up a stairwell to a hallway lined with framed posters, each one proclaiming a different event taking place at ‘NVCR’ over the years. Carlos eyed the bold, blocky designs with interest as they passed until they came to a door at the end with a small window and a lit sign above that read ON AIR DO NOT DISTURB.

“He should hit the weather in a minute or so,” Dana said.

Through the little window, Carlos could see a man hunched over a desk, his chin resting in both hands as he leaned into a microphone almost conspiratorially. He couldn’t hear the man’s words, but from his face and bearing he could only imagine he was crooning. Carlos had been terrified of talking to the man on the radio for fear that he would spout absurd orders at him like he did on air, but watching him at work rather than just hearing him, he was suddenly nervous for a different reason.

Cecil hit a button and slid his headphones down to rest around his neck. Dana cracked the door open. “Cecil, Carlos the scientist is here to speak with you.”

The man startled. His eyes lighted on Carlos, and his hand got tangled in the cord of his headphones, yanking them sideways off his neck and probably minorly choking him in the process. He beamed as the headphones clattered onto the desktop. Carlos’ intimidation vanished instantly. “You wanted to talk to _me_?”

A recording of a man singing with a banjo was playing in the studio. “Yes,” said Carlos. The investigation of the seismic shifts and the probably pressing matter of the radiation levels that might be killing them weighed on his tongue with rivaling urgency, but what came out was, “I don’t know where to get bloodstones.”

“Oh.” Cecil’s brows raised. “You need a bloodstone?”

“A circle of them, actually.”

“Well, you can get them from the town’s certified bloodstone factory, of course.”

“Factory?” Carlos asked. “You’re manufacturing heliotrope?”

“We’re manufacturing _bloodstones_.” Cecil pushed back in his swivel chair. “What do you need them for?”

To follow your weird order, Carlos grumbled internally. “To...pray,” he said aloud, face reddening, but Cecil didn’t seem to think anything of it. Of course he didn’t, this was commonplace for him.

“Regularly, or for one-time use? They can be a bit pricey, and using ‘discount’ stones is of course out of the question, so if it’s just for temporary use I would suggest borrowing or using one of our town’s various public circles.”

“Public circle sounds… the most convenient.”

“I can show you where!” Cecil said brightly, leaning to rest his elbow on the desk but missing by a good few inches and not even bothering to try again. “I mean, if you want. I only have a few minutes left in the broadcast once we come back from the weather.”

Carlos was having trouble reconciling this person with the gravitas of the voice on the radio. He fought a smile. “Sure. I’d appreciate that.”

And that was how Carlos found himself back in the same park he’d started in, with the host of the most invasive radio show he’d ever heard, at dusk. He'd thought it had been dusk hours ago, but that would be a problem for another day.

“I actually didn’t come to the station just to ask about bloodstones,” Carlos said as they walked directly over the epicenter of the seismic waves.

“Oh?” The word lilted with interest.

“I wanted the station to know that there are some scientifically… _interesting _things going on in this town, that I wasn’t sure people were aware of.”

“_ Rea_lly.”

“Yes. For starters, the levels of radiation in–well, this whole town, but specifically your radio station–_ should,_ by all means, be rapidly killing you. And also–" Carlos stopped and glanced over at Cecil, who was gazing back with an air of innocent but probably polite attentiveness. “And, that was a sarcastic 'really', wasn’t it? You know, of course you know.” If he knew that Carlos and Lauren were meeting up at the diner, he probably knew that his station was ensconced in lethal amounts of radiation. He wasn’t sure how that logic followed, exactly, but at the moment he was convinced of it.

“No, not at all! If anything, it’s always nice to be told your town is scientifically interesting.”

“Um. Right.”

“Well, here we are!" Cecil stopped and gestured to a ring of speckled green stones in the grass. "I can give you some privacy if you'd like."

"Oh." Here they were indeed. Carlos surveyed the circle. "Thank you. For showing me, I mean, but I actually don't need to use it until tomorrow."

"Oh, okay! Well, that's where it is. There's also one in the public library, but no one's going to use _that, _for obvious reasons. I don't even know why I would mention it. I guess that's it, then! I'd love to hear more about these interesting scientific things sometime, though."

The stones were perfect ovals, smooth and shiny. Manufactured in a factory. Carlos crouched and ran a finger across one. It felt like a marble. "Cecil," he said.

"Yeah?" Cecil hovered to the side.

"You use these often?"

"Oh, yes. I can't even get into my apartment without bleeding on a stone."

After any other day, a statement like that would be alarming. "Bloodstones are used in...non-scientific endeavors."

Cecil gave a timorous chuckle. "Well, we can't all be scientists."

"That's not what I meant." He couldn't _say _what he meant, thanks to good ol' Noah Yom. "I mean, the power comes from a source other than a scientific one. Or, perhaps a similar source, as far as I can tell, but it can only be utilized by certain people, for...whatever reason." A reason Carlos had not found yet. "Do you know what I'm talking about?"

"Wow," said Cecil, a little slowly, his gaze intent. "I do not. It sounds fascinating, though."

Carlos shook his head brusquely at himself, standing. "No, of course. That didn't make any sense. I–thank you again."

"Oh, of course! It was on my way home anyway."

"Hope your night goes well."

"Not at all!"

The lights were all out in the motel when he got back. He found his way up the stairs in the dark and switched on a hall light. On the carpet in front of his door, there was a packet of paper. 

He picked it up and, unfortunately, read the front.

_We hope you enjoy your stay! To better ensure that your time here is an agreeable one, please read the enclosed list of municipal codes. _


	4. Chapter 4

"_For one country is different from another; its earth is different, as are its stones, wine, bread, meat… This means that each country, in addition to the general properties common to the whole world, also has its own specific properties_." _—Paracelsus_

He didn’t get any sleep that night.

The packet might not have taken all night to read through, even though it was on the fat side as far as packets of paper he was forced to read while already tired went, except for the small, irritating fact that any time he came across an ordinance phrased as a command, he had to stop and make sure he was abiding by it. And unfortunately, whoever had written this town’s laws seemed to delight in using commands as their phrasing of choice. 

If his mother had thought his kindergarten class was bad, she would have had a heart attack on the spot to see him staying here. Some of the ordinances weren’t bad. Just strange. Rules he never would have thought to go against anyway, like the ban on ownership of a barcode scanner or a reproduction of any of Gauguin’s work. Others were things he might have to keep in mind, like the prohibition of margarita glasses, thesauruses, and public descriptions of the moon, except, apparently, during ‘Poetry Week.’ Many were downright unreasonable, like the law against using sidewalks on a Wednesday, for ‘neighborhood maintenance’ purposes. All of them made him want to scream a little bit and triple-check his GPS to make sure he was still in the United States, or for that matter, planet Earth. By 2 a.m. he was filled with the compulsion to do some serious public property damage.

He stumbled out of his room around eleven, the last remaining item of contraband needing to be discarded in hand. The front door of the lobby opened just as he was reaching for it, admitting a very put-together looking Lauren. He had forgotten she was staying here too.

She greeted him with a cheery smile. “Whatcha got there?”

“Calculator,” he said wearily. “But don’t report me, please, I’m on my way to throw it out. I even disabled the calculator app on my phone, just in case.”

“Wow.” She looked him up and down, lips pressed together in amusement. Why was it every time he ran into her, he was in a state to warrant that look? “You’re in the same clothes you were yesterday.” He could detect a hint of playful scandal in that look now too.

“I… might have become a model Night Vale resident last night.”

“Oh,” she laughed. “You got the packet? Did you actually read that whole thing?”

“Yes,” he gritted with familiar annoyance at the lives of people who could ignore whatever they didn’t want to listen to at their own whim, but softened a moment later, remembering himself. “I wanted to apologize for running out on dinner last night. That was rude of me.”

“Oh, that’s alright.”

“Let me make it up to you. We can have dinner, whenever works for you, I’ll pay.”

“Really?” She tilted her head slightly, making her look younger. Which also might have been helped by her lack of business attire this morning. “I’d like that. Do you just want to meet up at the diner again, or go somewhere else?”

He hesitated. “Do they always play that show in the evening?”

“The radio show? I think so. Why?”

“Maybe somewhere else. What about Big Rico’s? Apparently we’re mandated by law to go there anyway.” That had been cause for a particularly aggravated bout of yelling at around 3 a.m. that morning.

“Sure! I’m free tonight. Because, well, I have no friends.” She grinned. Carlos smiled back.

“Same here.”

“Well, maybe we can change that.”

Was making friends that effortless for normal people? It was a little disconcerting, if Carlos was being honest. “Maybe we can.”

In the daylight, the red speckles of hematite stood out even more starkly against the green jasper in the bloodstones. Like drops of, well, blood, which was of course how it got its nickname. Carlos sat on the grass just outside the circle, as if limiting the amount of time he was actually sat in the center of it would make this whole ordeal less conspicuous. He felt silly as soon as he’d done it. For one thing, there was a time in his life when he would do things like this in the open without batting an eye. He hadn’t learned to be self conscious about it until well into his twenties. For another, this was a town that had a _public-use_ bloodstone circle in their _park._ The only possible attention-drawing aspect of what he was doing was the simple audacity of his existence as an outsider.

Carlos had used bloodstones before, or at least attempted it, but he wouldn’t have called what he’d done with them praying. But maybe that wasn’t so far off from what it was. Sitting quietly, eyes closed, while concentrating on what he wanted manifested in the world or in himself.

He stood and repositioned himself in the center of the ring before sitting back down again, forcing himself not to glance around at who might be looking. Pulling a thumbtack and a compass out of his pocket, he pricked the tip of his middle finger and drew a small circle with it on the surface of the east-facing stone. He normally would face north, since bloodstones were typically used in rituals of healing the body and spirit, but right now he was dealing with a career dilemma, which meant east. Not that he thought it was going to work, but he wanted to execute the thing properly all the same.

He closed his eyes and spoke quietly, concentrating. “Cecil’s contract negotiation will go well. He will encounter few stressors, if any, and it will turn out in his favor.”

He had nothing left to say, but his eyes remained closed for a moment. The words held a different weight in his mouth than he remembered from his old spells. Did this bloodstone circle have magic to it that Carlos had never been able to capture on his own? He held his breath, searching inside that feeling, that lightness. But a moment later he realized what was different, and the good feeling vanished into shame. He opened his eyes, staring at his own little circle of blood. 

This was the first time he’d ever tried using magic to benefit someone other than himself. Performing a spoken ritual required him to feel what he was saying, so one meant for someone else’s benefit would naturally require a certain open generosity of spirit. That lightness came from doing a _nice thing._ Even though he knew it would ultimately have no effect.

He frowned, shoving the compass and bloodied tack back into his pocket. Not such a nice thing, considering he wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t have to, in the most literal sense. He went to his car—which he had yet to fully unpack, only digging through it as needed to find contraband—and got to work on setting up a more stable monitoring station. Maybe there was something in the pattern of the seismic waves that would indicate… something.

He set up shop on the side of a road leading out of town, picking the spot because it didn’t seem to get a lot of traffic and he wanted to avoid human interaction if possible. In all honesty, he was afraid that the town’s general hostility towards outsiders would result in some angry citizen yelling at him to get out of town, and then he would have to. And he wasn’t ready to leave just yet. There was too much here. He felt like a miner with a chisel, tapping away just outside a mineral-rich vein, and all he needed to do to uncover the motherlode was hammer a little bit more, a little bit closer.

By the time evening traffic was starting to pick up, he still hadn’t been able to make sense of anything. He needed a break from looking at a little screen, and pizza honestly sounded amazing.

He picked Lauren up outside the motel and they walked the few blocks down to Big Rico’s together. She was quiet on the walk, which suited Carlos just fine.

As soon as he entered the restaurant, bell softly dinging their arrival, he stopped, hand still holding the door open.

“_ —until a flash flood to head down there for the full waterfront experience! _”

“No.” He closed the door immediately, causing Lauren to bump into him from behind.

“Ouch.” 

“Sorry.”

“Something wrong? If you weren’t brand new in town, I’d think you just saw an ex in there.”

“They’re playing it here, too.”

“What—”

“The radio show, they’re playing the radio show.”

“Oh.” She paused, glancing at the door to the restaurant. “Kay.” Carlos did not move to reopen the door. “So... that radio show is a serious deal-breaker, huh?”

“I just...can’t listen to that show.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, not meeting her eye.

"Don’t get me wrong, I’m not exactly the biggest fan of Night Vale Community Radio either…” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Someone on the street stopped near them, so they stepped aside in case they wanted to go in. He felt a little bad for not defending Cecil, but it wouldn’t exactly support his case right now. Besides, it wasn’t as though he really knew Cecil. “I mean, do you want to go somewhere else?”

“No.” He swallowed. “We’re legally bound to eat here at some point this week anyway. Let’s just—is it okay if we just get our food to-go really quick and then eat it somewhere else? Back at the motel, maybe?”

“The motel?”

“I don’t mean—I just, we can go to the park or something—”

She put a hand on his shoulder. He finally met her eye. “Don’t give yourself a stroke, Carlos. We can go back to the motel. The lobby, maybe.”

“Okay.”

He hummed under his breath as they went inside, trying not to listen to the words pouring from whatever out-of-sight speaker and making sure not to give himself a stroke. He had no active faculty in the flow of blood to his brain, so it was about as simple as Dr. Kayali's request that he try not to die in an earthquake. Was this show playing everywhere in town? Lauren gave him an amused look but said nothing until they got to the counter.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Pizza,” he said a little too loudly, turning to the woman behind the counter. “Here’s my credit card, for the pizzas!”

“Thank you,” laughed Lauren, “but what kind of pizza?” She was smiling at him with this bright look in her eye and for a second Carlos forgot not to listen.

"_ —great howling was heard from the Night Vale Post Office yesterday. Postal workers claim no knowledge, although passers-by describe the sound as being a little like a human soul being destroyed through black magic. _"

He stared at the ceiling. “Did that just say…?”

“Oh no, are you about to leave again?”

He waited to see if anything else was said on the subject, but Cecil moved on to trash-talking some headdress-wearing Slavic guy. Carlos blinked back in her direction. “No. No… I’m not. Let’s get this pizza.”

Back in the oddly dim motel lobby with a large pizza box open on the coffee table between them, his mind was elsewhere. What did a human soul being destroyed through black magic _ sound _ like? Was that a common enough occurance for multiple citizens of Night Vale to recognize the sound? Was it just an exaggeration for dramatic effect?

“—speaking of which, did you know this town doesn’t have a mayor? They have a mayor’s office, but it just sits empty, and people throw paperwork in it.”

“Mm.”

Lauren put down her slice of pizza with a wince. Carlos refocused. 

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah,” she waved it off. “Just a tiny headache. You should eat some pizza!”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Do you want to go lay down? Or get some medicine?”

“No, no. Seriously, Carlos, eat something. You haven’t touched the pizza, I feel rude being the only one eating.”

“Oh.” He hadn’t eaten anything. He didn’t even see what kind of pizza they’d gotten. It looked like pepperoni, but one could never be too sure in this town. He picked up a slice and started eating, which seemed to appease Lauren. And it didn’t taste too bad, either, though he couldn’t have definitively said what the topping was.

He had just as much difficulty focusing on the conversation for the rest of dinner, but he did his best until Lauren excused herself to her room and said goodnight. As soon as she was gone, he threw away the pizza box and headed straight for the post office.

‘Straight’ might have been a generous term, since it took a bit of wandering to locate it, but once inside the strangest thing immediately noticeable was the fact that it was even open at this hour. He hadn’t expected to be able to go in, just wanting a chance to snoop around the exterior and see if anything was visibly or audibly amiss. It was peaceful inside, with beige walls that made Carlos think of postal workers, a basket of oranges on the counter, and a couple employees lethargically sorting letters.

“How can I help you?” One of them asked without looking up. Carlos cleared his throat. So this was what field work was, apparently, approaching loads of strangers and asking them questions. At least that’s what it had been for him so far. If he’d known, he might have thought twice about asking to be placed here.

“I was just wondering about… the howling? Do you know what I’m talking about?”

The guy just gave him a blank look. _Workers claim no knowledge_, Cecil had said. Huh. 

“It was yesterday? According to the radio.”

“Oh.” He shrugged. “None of us were working yesterday.”

“None of you?” ‘None’ was an interesting choice of words when speaking of only two people, but sure.

“Nope,” said the shorter of the two workers. “This was supposed to be my day off, but I got called in to cover for one of the guys here yesterday. Don’t ask those guys about it, though, they got harrassed with enough questions yesterday.”

Well, great. That cut off a potential lead. He glanced around in case he had missed some sign of black magic having been performed here recently, but he didn’t even know what he was looking for, really.

“So you two don’t know of anyone who might be... practicing that sort of thing?”

“What sort of thing?”

“Causing unexplainable phenomena?”

The short one chuckled, nudging at the taller one. “Unexplainable phenomena, he says.” The chuckle grew into a full belly laugh. “Like there’s some type of phenomena that _ could _ be explained!”

The taller one joined in while Carlos stood, reeling from such a statement. “Well— actually, that’s—” he shook his head, forcing himself not to even start with that, but it took some willpower and a reminder of his desire to avoid lengthy conversations with people. “Nevermind. Thank you for... well.” He turned to go, the laughter fading behind him.

Cecil was just coming out of the station when Carlos got there. “I need to talk to you,” Carlos called as he approached. “About the post office.”

The notebook Cecil was carrying nearly dropped from his hands, but he recovered it at the last second. It took him a moment to answer, eyes a little wide, and Carlos realized he had kind of snuck up on him. “Oh?”

“You said that the howling sounded like a soul being destroyed by black…” He trailed off, hoping that Cecil would pick it up for himself. Instead he just prompted,

“Go on.”

“Destroyed by black…!” He waved his hands. “You remember what you said, right?”

“Oh! Yes, did you want me to fill in the blank?” He nodded with a crinkle between his brows as if this was a little game Carlos wanted to play that Cecil had decided to take very seriously. “Passers-by described the sound as being a little like a human soul being destroyed through black magic.”

“Yes!” Carlos crowed. “That! That’s what I was trying to talk about, yesterday, with the bloodstones and the non-scientific endeavors.”

“You were trying to talk about black magic?”

“Well, not necessarily _ black_.”

“There are other colors?”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to stall you,” Carlos realized they had just been standing outside the station doors. “Can I walk you to your car?"

Cecil hugged his notebook to his chest. “O-okay.”

“Anyway,” Carlos tried again as they walked. “About the—the black…”

“Can you not say the word magic?” Cecil asked, and Carlos felt suddenly too warm. He tugged at his collar. “Is it some kind of scientists’ code?”

That was actually about as accurate as anything. "Something like that.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about what happened at the post office.”

“Do you know of anyone in town that might practice… you-know-what?”

“Not specifically, no.” Cecil stopped in front of a dark VW bug that must have been his and hovered near the driver’s door, shifting from one foot to the other. “I wanted to thank you, for praying in the bloodstone circle about my contract negotiation. It went as well as could be expected. No significant limbs lost, anyway.” He met Carlos’ look with a soft, shy smile. “I didn’t know when I was showing you where it was, obviously, that that’s what you wanted it for. It’s...very sweet, Carlos, thank you. It really means a lot, especially since you don’t really know me. I hadn’t even known you listened to the show.”

“I don’t.” It was a little unnecessary, maybe, but Cecil was looking at him like he was the kindest person he’d ever encountered and saying his name in this unbelievably soft tone and Carlos just couldn’t take that.

Cecil looked a little thrown. “Then—how would you have known about the contract negotiation? And more specifically you quoted something I said on the radio and asked about it only moments ago.”

“Alright, yes, I have listened,” he amended, “but only briefly and never on purpose.”

“Oh.” Cecil bit his lip and Carlos was being too blunt, but he’d been telling the truth ever since he’d been told to as a kid, before he’d ever read that lying was actually against the law here, and he couldn’t stop now just because a radio host might get his feelings a little hurt. Even if he wanted to. And it had gotten Cecil to stop looking at him like he was a saint, so there was that.

“How did you even know I used the circle for the contract negotiation?” It was the same as when he’d reported on Carlos and Lauren’s meet-up at the diner. There was no way he should have known about either one of those things; they weren’t _ news_.

“I’m the radio host,” he said, as if that explained everything.

Carlos remembered, suddenly, one of the witches that his mother had hired when he was a little boy. She was one of those who always dressed as if they’d arrived at your door after wandering in the wilderness for forty years with a ragtag group of mystical nomads who ate, drank, and breathed magic, complete with long, flowy skirt, garishly colored head and neck scarves, and gratuitous amounts of jewelry. Among other things, she’d claimed to be a clairvoyant, and while Carlos was pretty sure she’d been a hack, he’d always remembered the term and added it to his studies years later.

He thought of how the radiation levels in town spiked higher the closer you got to Cecil’s radio station.

“Cecil,” he said. “_You _ wouldn’t happen to know much about you-know-what, would you?”

“Me? No. Not beyond bloodstones, if you’re saying those are magic, so no, I wouldn’t say I know much. I don’t even really know anything about bloodstones.”

An idea was starting to take shape. Maybe a farfetched idea, maybe a downright bad one. “Would you be interested in learning?”

Cecil blinked at him. “From you?"

"Yes."

"Are you a witch?”

Carlos sighed. “It is one of the most infuriating facts of my life that I am not.”

“But you like magic.”

“Most of the time I actively hate it.”

“You are a fascinating person, Carlos.”

“But listen—” He hardly even knew what he was suggesting, but he kept barreling forward. It had definitely been a tad too long since he’d last slept. “I know loads of theory, I have books.” _ With _ him, actually, in his hotel room, because he hadn’t quite been able to keep himself from hoping that he would need them in some capacity. “I could teach you. I could try.”

Cecil tilted his head, looking cautiously intrigued. “Why would you want to teach me?”

“I…” There was pretty limited maneuverability within this question. He could only refuse to answer or offer a small, vague piece of truth. “I need help with something.” He met Cecil’s gauging look. “And I can’t do it by myself.”

If Carlos had been in Cecil’s position and someone had proposed a similar idea to him, he almost definitely would have told that person to take a hike. But Carlos was banking on the hope that Cecil was not like him. In more ways than one.

“Well, how could I say no to that?” Cecil said, apparently satisfied with whatever he was seeing. “Alright, Carlos! Teach me magic.”


	5. Chapter 5

_ "He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches." —Maxims for Revolutionists, George Bernard Shaw _

Carlos was excited for all of two beats before his head started to throb.

"Oh! Um, well the basis of it is becoming more in tune with your higher self— I—I can go get my books—"

"Not right now!" Cecil laughed, looking a bit delighted. "I didn't mean right now."

"Right," Carlos chuckled, smiling sheepishly as his head cleared. Silly him. One of the perks of this curse was leaving people thinking he was a little more erratic and rash than he actually was.

"It's just, I've had a nerve-wracking day at work," Cecil explained, "you look like you haven't slept, um… maybe ever. Not— I don't mean it in a rude way, you still look—" He squeezed his eyes shut and scrunched up his nose.

"It's okay," Carlos assured him. "I haven't. And you should go relax, unwind."

"But tomorrow?" Cecil offered. "In the morning? I don't work until later."

Carlos nodded. "Tomorrow morning. Around 8? You can come by my room, it's 208. Just so I have all my stuff on hand."

"Okay! I'll…" He was nodding a lot as he tossed his notebook into his car, "come by your room."

"Also! Night Vale is currently experiencing a 9.6 level earthquake, and has been for the past few days," he said as Cecil got in the driver's seat. "Just in case you want to let your listeners know. I get the feeling it won't cause mass panic."

"I'll tell them to submit an insurance claim," said Cecil.

Before Carlos went back to the motel for the night, he stopped at a drugstore to pick up a few basic supplies for beginner-level magic. No one harassed him, which made him wonder if before he had somehow been unknowingly and openly breaking the law. On the way back to his car he made sure to jay-walk across Cherry Street, which was mandatory, and quietly lamented whatever information in his head had to be booted out to make room for all these municipal ordinances.

If it turned out that Cecil did have a capacity for magic, Carlos would need to stay here a lot longer than Dr. Kayali had estimated in order to help him get to the level required to even attempt a ritual as advanced as curse-breaking. He'd probably have to tell the college he was taking leave from the program. And after all that, it still might not work. For what felt like the thousandth time, he tried to keep his expectations and his hopes low. There was definitely no point in mentally drafting an email to his advisor before knowing if Cecil had any potential. 

He could hardly sleep from the nerves after poring through the first few sections of his first magic book, trying to put together some sort of lesson plan. He probably wouldn’t have been able to manage more than a couple hours of rest if he had gotten any sleep the night before, but he hadn’t, so pure exhaustion eventually knocked him out straight until his alarm went off in the morning.

“Wow,” Cecil said when Carlos let him in, “you’ve only been here a few days?” Carlos glanced around and realized that was his polite way of pointing out that the room was basically trashed. He’d completely neglected to tidy up after rampaging through all his belongings, checking to make sure everything that remained was legal. “Do they not have turndown service?”

“I really don’t know what you think turndown service is,” he said. “But no, they don’t. Let me clear a space.” Carlos shoved his suitcase and most of the items spilling out of it under the bed. He grabbed his beginner magic book and his grimoire and set them in the middle of the space, then sat on the floor, motioning for Cecil to sit across from him. Cecil did so, back straight and at attention.

“Now,” Carlos started, “I know you’ve agreed to this, but in case you’ve been wondering what sort of qualifications I have to teach something like this, the answer is not really any. Ideally you would learn from an actual practitioner of the art, so these lessons might not be as effective as we’d like. If that turns you off to the whole thing, you are under no obligation to participate. But,” he continued, “though I’m unable to make this work myself, it’s not from a lack of study or knowledge or practice. I genuinely believe the capacity to make it work comes from a deep, innate part of who a person is, maybe even at the cellular level, though I haven’t been able to pinpoint exactly what it is. Again, not from lack of trying. I’ve studied this art _ extensively,_ though not formally, for years. Since I was a teenager. I know these principles maybe even better than someone who can get them to work, which I think might put me in a unique position to actually be a pretty good teacher. Any questions or concerns so far?”

Cecil just sat there with a small smile on his face for a moment before asking, “What made you want to study magic?”

“Okay,” Carlos sighed, because of course he figured that was coming. It was a fair question; he was a scientist, after all. “Here’s the thing. I can’t answer that, and I also can’t tell you the specifics of what it is I need your help with. I know it’s a lot to ask. I promise it’s nothing illegal or immoral, and if I ever ask you to do something that you are not comfortable with, you absolutely do not have to do it. I hope that’s clear. You’re here because I asked you to be, and I appreciate that.”

“I’m here because I want to be,” said Cecil. “But how will I help you with it if I don’t know what it is I’m doing?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” Something he was not looking forward to figuring out, but it would be a while until they would have to deal with that, if they ever did.

“Okay,” Cecil conceded uncertainly.

“I’m sorry,” Carlos said sincerely. “That’s the way it has to be. I understand if that’s a deal-breaker, though.”

“No,” Cecil said, a little more quickly than Carlos thought was probably wise. “I want to do this.” A swell of gratitude hit Carlos that he didn’t know how to properly express. Probably saying ‘thank you’ would have been good, but he just stared at Cecil and his kind eyes dumbly for a long moment before asking,

“Any other questions?”

Cecil hugged his legs to his chest and rocked back with a smile. “What does Carlos the scientist do when he’s not investigating small towns or teaching private magic lessons?”

“I’m finishing up a doctoral program,” he said. “I’m actually supposed to be picking my dissertation topic while I’m out here.” He had to at least try to find one before he went back, according to his advisor’s order.

“You’re getting a doctorate in science?” Carlos could only describe Cecil’s tone as...dazzled. He nodded, self-conscious.

“In behavioral neuroscience. At the institute I’m at, we’ve been focusing our research on pain; the physiological mechanisms of nociception and neuropathy.”

“That,” Cecil said, “is amazing.”

Carlos shrugged, his face warm. “It’s kind of unrelated to what I’m doing out here. Hopefully one day it will be useful.” One of the things that had attracted him to this research was the prospect of nailing down exactly what caused the symptoms of his curse at the biological level. When it came down to it, what truly forced his hand when given a direct order was unmanageable, overwhelming physical pain. If he could just understand that pain well enough, then maybe there was hope of managing and mastering it. That was the idea, anyway. His sister had been right; he did end up trying to break his curse with science. That was what he _ wanted _ to write his dissertation on, but there wasn’t really a way he could do that without talking about the curse.

He wondered idly, definitely not for the first time, what he would be doing with his life if his aunt hadn’t done this to him.

“I’m sure it will be, if it isn’t already,” said Cecil. “Which seems unlikely.”

Carlos offered him an up-quirk of his lips before standing. “So we’re going to prepare the space. While I do this, take the cord out of that brown bag there and make a circle around where we’re sitting. It should keep the energy put into whatever we do in a confined space, and keep out any interfering energy. Make sure the bag is inside too, so we don’t have to cross the boundary to get things.” Cecil moved to do so, while Carlos pulled out a stick of sandalwood and a lighter. He lit the end of the stick, counted silently to ten, then blew it out, walking the smoke around the perimeter Cecil had just set. Cecil sat back down and watched.

“This is sandalwood,” said Carlos as he made a slow circle sunwise around the cord. “Now I know what you must be thinking. Why is this guy burning a well-known aphrodisiac to prepare for a ritual?”

“That is not at all what I was thinking,” Cecil said cheerfully.

“Many of the chemical properties of sandalwood that are noted for heightening arousal are also properties that make it excellent for setting a relaxed yet focused atmosphere for meditation, which is largely due to its main compound, alpha-santalol. It’s often burned in Buddhist temples for this purpose.”

“But it _ is _an aphrodisiac.”

Carlos completed the circle and gave a small nod. The smoke twirled upward from the end of his stick, filling the room with a gentle, earthy scent. “A mild one. Inhalation can heighten pulse rate, systolic blood pressure, attentiveness, and skin conductance.”

“Skin conductance?”

“When a person is more emotionally aroused, their skin actually conducts electricity better. It’s directly proportional to the number of sweat glands that have been activated.”

“Oh,” breathed Cecil, and Carlos could see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed.

“But neither I nor the Buddhist monks are trying to seduce you,” he added quickly. “This is for clarity of mind and a sense of calm.”

“You do know a lot,” Cecil murmured as Carlos sat back down and stuck the sandalwood in a censer. Carlos shrugged.

“That part’s just science.”

“It’s just as mystical to me,” Cecil said.

“Alright,” said Carlos, moving on, “Say, ‘As above, so below.’”

“As above, so below,” parroted Cecil.

Carlos nodded. “It sounds unnecessarily religious, but I looked into the origin of the phrase and it’s actually not; it comes from alchemy. You don’t always need to say those exact words, but it’s good to mark the division between casting the circle and getting started with the work you’re doing in it in some way.” He set the books to the side. “Now I’m about to guide us through some breathing exercises to help relax our bodies and focus our minds. Meditation is a good way to get in touch with your higher self.”

Carlos led him through the counts, following them himself at first, but after a few minutes he opened his eyes. Meditation had never been something he was good at, and it wasn’t really important for him to go through the motions right now. He took a candle out of his brown magic bag, set it in the center of the circle, and lit it, continuing to count softly. Cecil’s eyes were closed, his legs crossed, the light casting warm, flickering shapes across the planes of his face. There was a small crinkle between his brows that suggested he wasn’t fully relaxing.

“Perhaps you’ve experienced a certain state of mind that’s shown you glimpses of happenings across Night Vale,” Carlos said quietly, in the same tone as he’d been counting. “Things that you’ve seen, but not with your eyes. Things you wouldn’t have known otherwise. Maybe things you’ve heard, but not with your ears. Recall that feeling, and sink back into it. Soften your inner gaze.”

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” said Cecil, cracking one eye open, “but what are you talking about?”

“The odd little details you somehow know about and report on the radio,” Carlos said. “Or maybe you don’t report all of them. You didn’t tell your listeners what I used the bloodstone circle for, did you?”

Cecil tilted his head. “I just read the notes Dana puts on my desk,” he said.

“Dana?”

“For the things neither of us are out in the field to see, she gets calls, or sometimes I do. Or texts. Not all of it is something worth sharing on the air, but we have some _ exceptionally _ nosy citizens in this town. I think Diane Crayton was the one in the park while you were using the bloodstone circle. She has remarkably good hearing.”

A humiliated, foolish ache settled in Carlos’ stomach. “So you’re not… clairvoyant.”

“I don’t think so.”

There was a knock on the door. Carlos startled and, pushing down crushing disappointment, called, “Yes?”

The door opened and Lauren peeked in. “Hey, Carlos! Oh, uh. Cecil.” She took in the scene; Cecil and Carlos sitting inside a cord circle, a candle lit between them, the room still hazy with incense.

“Oh, hi.”

“_Lauren_,” said Cecil with such open acrimony that Carlos turned to stare.

“What’s going on here?” Lauren asked with no acknowledgement of that at all, stepping inside.

“Don’t come in the circle,” Carlos said quickly.

“Is this what you were saying you were going to help him with?” she asked Cecil.

“Stop listening to my show!”

“Did you need something?” Carlos asked.

“Oh, yeah! I just had a favor to ask you. Big favor.”

“I don’t remember anyone inviting you in,” said Cecil.

“Cecil!” said Carlos. As he turned toward Lauren to apologize, she visibly winced and stepped back out into the hallway. Carlos sensed little chance of understanding the energy here and only just restrained himself from asking Lauren if she was a vampire.

“No, he’s right, I was being rude,” she said.

“Right now’s not really the best time, Lauren,” Carlos said. He was not interested in hearing whatever favor she wanted from him, since with his luck, he wouldn’t have a choice in whether to do it or not.

“Okay, sorry! I’m heading out in a bit, so just call me whenever you’re done with this.”

“I don’t have your number.”

“Give me your phone and I’ll put it in.”

His phone was on the nightstand. He wasn’t supposed to leave the circle, that would break it. If there even was anything to break.

“Alright Cecil, I’m going to cut a door in the circle,” he said, his complaints starting up from the delay in obedience. He stood and they lessened. “I’ll show you how later, but right now—” He sucked in a sharp breath; having stopped at the edge of the circle, a swooping pain turned his stomach. He quickly drew a door in the air above the cord, stepping through it and then drawing it in reverse on the other side.

“Are you okay?” Cecil asked as Carlos walked briskly to the nightstand.

“Yeah,” he said, picking up the phone and taking it to Lauren. She was watching him, and he tried to act as nonchalant as possible as he gave it to her.

She punched in a number. “Call me,” she said as she handed it back. Carlos held the phone by his side and tried to hit the call button as surreptitiously as possible, not wanting to be seen struggling against the curse again, so soon. Her phone buzzed once in her pocket before he managed to hang up. She looked down.

“Oops,” he said.

There were the first notes of a question in her eyes when she looked up again. 

“Now you have my number too,” he said, wishing he had thought of that half a second earlier. “I’ll call you.”

“Thanks.” She checked her phone and gave a little half-wave, mumbling “bye, Cecil” before heading back to her room.

His hand shook as he cut a door in the circle and reentered it.

“So,” he said, seated once again, “I get the feeling you don’t like her.”

Cecil crossed his arms and stayed silent.

“Is it because she doesn’t like you? I kinda feel like she doesn’t like you. After she first talked about you, I thought you would be an asshole.”

“I think I probably didn’t like her first,” Cecil said. “I don’t really know how to explain it.”

“Fair enough.” Carlos had certainly experienced immediate dislike of certain people without fully knowing why, although he had never been quite so blatant about it as Cecil was. “Anyway, where were we?”

“You were just discovering I’m not clairvoyant.”

“Right.” That certainly put a damper on his hopes. It had been the main reason he’d thought this might work. So many other things were out of the ordinary in this town, he had assumed magic where there wasn't any. Was there even a point in going on with this?

It was less awkward than just kicking Cecil out without trying, anyway. He reset the tone, going through the breathing exercises again until satisfied that Cecil was relaxed and refocused, which took a good while.

“We’re going to start with a simple, one-word incantation,” he said, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb Cecil out of his focus. “Even though it’s simple, it is likely that it won’t work on the first try. This doesn’t mean that it will never work. Open your eyes.”

Cecil did so, gaze finding Carlos. 

“Your focus is the flame of this candle,” said Carlos, and Cecil looked at that instead. “This is where you will direct all of your intention and energy. Your goal is to extinguish the flame. You may want to put a hand in front of your mouth when you speak the incantation so you know that it isn’t your breath that blows it out.”

Cecil nodded, gazing into the flame.

“The key to this spell, as with most spells, is clear visualization. Visualize the darkness you wish to create. A simple aid for that is to just go ahead and close your eyes again.”

Cecil closed his eyes, breathing slow and steady, his hand in front of his mouth.

“Visualize the smoke that the extinguished flame would leave behind. Imagine the smell of it. The word is _ restinguo._"

“_Restinguo,_” said Cecil, and the flame went out.

Carlos didn’t breathe. The wick sputtered out smoke, and a fat bead of hot wax rolled down the side of the candle. “Ce—Cecil, open your eyes.”

He did, and then perked up at the sight of the candle, back straightening. “Did I do it?”

Carlos picked up the candle and took it to the very edge of the circle, scooping up his lighter. “Go stand over there,” he said, pointing at the opposite edge. Cecil stood and went while Carlos relit the candle.

“_Restinguo,_” Cecil said with his hand blocking his mouth, very softly so as to not use much air. The candle flickered out in Carlos’ hand.

“Oh my God,” said Carlos. Cecil laughed, bouncing up and down on his toes.

“I did it!”

“I’m not sure I even did a good job explaining what to do,” Carlos breathed, staring at the smoking wick.

“Well, clearly you did!”

“And you’ve never done that before?”

“No, I can just blow a candle out with my breath; I wouldn’t think to do it with a word while _ blocking _my breath.”

“No, yeah, I was frustrated by some of the earlier spells too, because there are easier ways to snuff a candle, right? But you have to start small so eventually you can do things that you wouldn’t be able to by any other means.”

“Tell me another one!”

Carlos’ heart was already racing in his chest just from this one. “Okay,” he said, because it wasn’t like it was up to him, and slid the beginner magic book into the center of the circle. “Sit. This one is going to just be opening the cover of the book. It’s kind of convenient for if you have your hands full doing something else, like complicated spellwork, or… cooking, or something.” This seemed like a truer test, since while it was highly _ unlikely _ that two undetectable drafts had blown out the candle right as Cecil had spoken, he supposed it was _ possible. _

“Okay,” Cecil nodded, sitting and focusing on the book.

“Remember to visualize. The word is _ retego. _ I uncover, I expose.”

The pause before Cecil spoke might as well have been infinite. A drop of still cooling wax spilled over and burned Carlos’ finger, hardening onto his skin.

“_Retego._”

The cover lifted slowly, the binding of the book making a small cracking sound as it opened. Cecil beamed and leaned forward to pick up the book, happily cradling it in both hands like a piping cup of cocoa.

“This is a library book, Carlos,” he admonished.

“I saved my allowance for a month to pay the fine.”

“You’re from a county called Glass?” Cecil asked. “That’s adorable.” He looked up to grin at Carlos, but his brows quickly drew together. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Carlos sniffed and swiped at his cheeks. “Um. Ha. I guess I’ve never actually seen… you-know-what, performed successfully. Sorry, I didn’t mean to get, uh. It’s just. I never expect anything to work.” He breathed out harshly through his nose, lips pressed together. “It’s _ real_. I knew it was, but.”

Cecil’s eyes really were so kind. He scooted forward a smidge and put a hand on Carlos’ knee, squeezing it gently. The scent of sandalwood still hung heavy between them, and Carlos definitely hadn’t meant to _ cry _ this morning. He chuckled out of pure self-consciousness, wiping his eyes on his sleeve.

“That’s probably good for now, I don’t want to overload you or wear you out when it’s so brand new. You can take the books with you if you want. Read through them, or don’t.”

“You trust me with your books?” Cecil murmured.

“I think so,” said Carlos, which was as affirmative an answer as his perpetual truth-telling order would allow. “Just keep them somewhere safe until we can do this again. And don’t skip around too much.”

“Of course.”

“Alright, so we’re done with the circle. When releasing it, say something like, ‘my circle is open,’ and then pick the cord back up counter-clockwise.”

Cecil rolled onto his back. “My circle is open!” he declared, and kicked his leg in the air. “I’m taking this seriously,” he defended at Carlos’ raised eyebrows, rolling onto his feet and pulling Carlos to his. His hands were warm. Carlos thought his own were likely better conductors of electricity than usual. “Carlos, I just did _ magic._”

“You did,” Carlos acknowledged, laughing. He didn’t even know what that must feel like. Cecil hugged him, and Carlos should have hugged back, but then it was over and Cecil was smiling sheepishly as he released him like he was rethinking that whole decision.

Once the supplies were all tucked back in the brown bag, Carlos gave him his number in case he had any questions before their next session. Cecil went to leave, but stopped short once the door was open.

“What’s that?” Carlos asked. Cecil picked up the thick, black padded envelope and started to pull out something made of a thin, plasticky orange material.

“Oh, your New Citizen Welcome Packet!” He looked to Carlos in surprise. “Did you already go twenty-four hours without breaking the law? That’s remarkable!”

“Is that all it takes to become a citizen in this town?” Carlos murmured, taking the proffered packet. “I didn’t ask to be one.”

“No, no one does.”

He’d have to look through that and hope he hadn’t somehow lost his American citizenship over to a governing entity he hadn’t been aware of later. Right now his fingers were itching to complete an order he’d nearly forgotten about, now that they were done with their lesson.

“I should call Lauren, see what she wants.”

“Okay. Well, congratulations!”

“Thanks, I guess.” A rectangular piece of plastic fell from the envelope to the floor, landing with the words ‘Alert Citizen’ in a bold font face-up. “Congratulations to you too, on the spellwork.”

“Thanks!”

As soon as the door closed behind Cecil, he pulled out his phone. The quickly rising dizziness in his head dissipated as soon as his finger touched the screen.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If this chapter were an episode of Friends, it would be titled "The One With All the Phone Calls"

_ "A layman will no doubt find it hard to understand how pathological disorders of the body and mind can be eliminated by 'mere' words. He will feel that he is being asked to believe in magic. And he will not be so very wrong, for the words which we use in our everyday speech are nothing other than watered-down magic. But we shall have to follow a roundabout path in order to explain how science sets about restoring to words a part at least of their former magical power." —Sigmund Freud _

“I’m feeling pretty good right now, Lauren, so I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t ask me to do something that’s gonna bum me out.”

“So before you say no,” she said, “just hear me out.”

“This is off to a great start.”

“This guy came up to me at the grocery store and asked me if I thought you’d agree to have dinner with him, since he knows we’re friends.”

Carlos frowned at his receiver. “Why?”

“Well, presumably because he’s interested in you.”

“Or he wants to convince me to leave town. Who is this guy?”

“His name’s Earl Harlan,” she said. “He’s chef at some fancy place in town.”

“I don’t know anyone named Earl Harlan.”

“Yeah, I’m sure he’s just heard stuff about you, maybe seen you around. It would just be one date.”

“I don’t do that,” Carlos said doubtfully.

“What, date men?”

“Date.”

“Come on, Carlos!” she urged. “He seemed like he really wanted to meet you, and it would be so good for my PR if at least one citizen in this town liked me.”

“Your PR?” He squinted. 

“Yeah,” she said, and she sounded distinctly more genial now. "_Things _ are in the works. I might have some exciting news soon, so you may want to stay tuned.”

“Well, you do have at least one citizen who likes you,” Carlos said dryly, glancing at the packet in his hand. “They’ve just claimed me as their own.”

“Wow, really? How’d that happen?”

“Apparently from abiding by the law for twenty-four hours.”

“Huh. Guess I haven’t managed that. No one’s arrested me about it yet.”

“What kind of things are in the works?”

“You’ll just have to wait and see! I’m still checking on some things. So where did we stand on the whole date thing?”

“I don’t know, Lauren...” Almost immediately he regretted not giving an outright refusal.

“Come on, do it! Say you’ll do it, pleee—” Her begging was cut short by a sound like she was hissing between her teeth.

“Fine, I’ll do it. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah... Just another little headache. Thanks, Carlos! I really appreciate it! You have a reservation Friday at 7, at Tourniquet. That’s the fancy place where he’s chef.”

“Oh God, we’re going to be eating food he cooked?”

“Yeah, so try to like it. And try to like him! Who knows, this could be good for both of us!”

“Okay, I’ve gotta go.” Before she could say anything else to make this date even more difficult.

Carlos had never had a magic student before, but he imagined it wasn’t exactly typical to pick things up as quickly as Cecil did. He was doing a lot of reading on his own between lessons, and by the end of the week he was able to perform a minor healing charm, soothing the itch out of a bug bite on his own arm. It was a fairly delicate spell for a beginner, as was anything involving the human body, and Carlos was duly impressed.

The thing was, when Carlos quizzed him on theory, he only answered correctly about half the time. He struggled to keep straight the uses of magical tools and the properties of magical ingredients. It seemed fitting that verbal spells were more his style; after all, it was normal for each witch to have their strengths in certain areas, and Cecil used his voice for a living. However, when prompted to describe what he was doing, exactly, or to explain what he’d read or what he should have been getting out of the daily practices and habits Carlos had started him on, he was fumbling and unsure.

But it didn’t seem to matter. Most spells he spoke worked on the first try, and he got the hang of the few that didn’t fairly quickly.

“I really hope you’re a good person,” Carlos said after watching him mend a crack in one of Carlos' mugs.

Cecil chuckled. “Why’s that?”

“I feel a little responsible for unleashing you onto the world. And to think what you could be capable of if you understood even sixty percent of what you were doing.”

“Maybe I’d be worse.” He banged the mug against the floor to break it and do the spell over again. “If it puts your mind at ease,” he went on as if he hadn’t just struck Carlos dumb and made him reconsider everything he’d ever read about the study of magic with one simple hypothetical, “I do try to be a good person.”

Carlos was not a particularly trusting man, but he felt inclined to believe that.

“What happened there?” Cecil asked. Carlos followed his line of sight to the cluster of red bumps dotting the side of his index finger.

“Oh, this? I burned it on a pan, heating something up on the stove last night. Thought about getting some aloe vera, but… didn’t.”

“C’mere,” Cecil murmured as he flipped to a new page in the book. Carlos scooted closer, maybe a bit closer than Cecil had intended, just to be safe. When Cecil looked up again, he seemed surprised but not put off.

“Either it will work or it will do nothing, right?” he checked.

“Well, not necessarily. It could do something you didn’t intend if it’s not right. That's actually pretty concerning that you would ask that, after all the reading you've done, but nothing weird has happened for you at all so far, so—” he quieted when Cecil wrapped his fingers around his wrist, turning his hand palm-up. He considered himself a bit of a lab rat anyway; even if something did go a bit wrong, he couldn’t imagine that it would be worse than anything he’d already done to himself in the name of science. He’d once accidentally given himself neurapraxia during a botched nerve block injection and hadn’t been able to move most of the left side of his body from the waist up for nearly two months. “I trust you.”

Cecil inhaled, slow. There were hints of a smile at the corners of his mouth that he visibly tamed to relax as he took another breath, placing the tips of his fingers gently against the side of Carlos’ pointer finger. “Fires that scorch,” he incanted, voice low, “douse your torch. Let this flesh breathe cool.”

The affected skin had been uncomfortably hot, as was the nature of a minor thermal burn, the result of the skin’s temperature having been raised to the point of cell death. Now it flooded with crisp relief that felt like Cecil's voice itself dipping under his skin, the tactile equivalent of quenching a desperate thirst with a drink of chilled water. Carlos let out a reflexive sigh.

“Better?” Cecil asked. Carlos nodded.

“It’s like I can feel my skin cells rejuvenating. And see it, too.” The angry pink was already fading. Cecil brightened.

“That’s so neat!” He passed his thumb over the skin, smooth once again, and Carlos kept very still. He liked the feel of Cecil’s fingers against his and didn’t know if he should hold on to the moment or put a stop to it. Had he really isolated himself so much that a simple touch of hands was so pleasant? Or maybe it was the magic?

“Maybe we should stop burning sandalwood when we do this,” he mumbled.

“What?” asked Cecil, alerting Carlos to the likelihood that he was not experiencing the same thing. His thumb and forefinger were still wrapped loosely around Carlos’. “Oh. Right.” He cleared his throat. “The sandalwood.” He dropped Carlos’ hand.

“It bodes well that you seem to have an aptitude for healing spells,” said Carlos.

“Does it?” Cecil asked curiously.

“Yeah, that’s the direction we’re going to be heading in.” Carlos had developed a sort of purging, healing, non-sacrificial variation on a lustratio that he hoped might flush out the curse given sufficient power to perform it.

“Oh.” The word was quiet. 

“Alright, I think we’re about done here. I have to take a shower, I was kind of losing track of the time.” Cecil had been busy that morning, so they started their lesson in the late afternoon.

“Do you have plans tonight?” Cecil asked, picking up the mug, book, and a few coins they had been using earlier. They hadn’t cast a circle that time, since it had mainly just been a precaution for the first few, and Cecil hadn’t seemed to suffer from the lack.

“Yeah, a reservation at Tourniquet. Do you know the kind of dress for that place? Is it super fancy?”

Cecil stopped what he was doing. “You have a reservation at _ Tourniquet? _”

“Yes?”

“Wow." He stretched out the word and whistled low. "Who do you know? LaShawn Mason? It is very difficult to get a reservation there.”

“So, super fancy?” Carlos sighed. “Earl Harlan. Well, I don’t know him, but we have a date.”

He wasn’t sure if he imagined it, but for a second he thought an almost crestfallen look passed over Cecil’s face, and as soon as he thought it he realized he hoped he hadn’t imagined it. Did that make him a bad person?

“You have a date with Earl Harlan.” It seemed like maybe he intended it as a question, but it didn’t really come out as one. He carried the mug and the book across the room and put them in the microwave. “So you, you asked Earl Harlan on a date.”

“He asked me. Kind of. Through Lauren.” Carlos took the mug and book out of the microwave.

“Lauren,” Cecil muttered, possibly unconsciously.

“Are you good to drive? Not too worn out from the charms?”

“What?” Cecil blinked. “Oh. Yeah. I should hope not, I still have to work tonight.”

“Take this.” Carlos put the book back into his hands as he ushered him out the door. “Read the next section on healing and the one on purification.” His student looked a touch aggrieved, but went without complaint.

It took Carlos an embarrassing amount of time to figure out what to do once he arrived at Tourniquet. There was no one at the door to greet him or lead him to a table, only a few benches and a large statue made out of what looked to be volcanic rock, entirely blocking the entrance. After sitting on a bench for about fifteen minutes wishing he could just leave, a couple came in and told the name of their party to the volcanic rock statue. Amazed, Carlos watched as a panel of rock slid to the side, allowing them entrance. 

Hesitantly he stood and approached the statue. “Um.” He felt a little foolish. “I’m here to see Earl Harlan? It’s Carlos—”

The panel slid back. Carlos jumped and then walked through, and a moment later a man approached him. He was wearing his chef clothes and had a sad sort of look to his eyes that Carlos suspected was permanent.

“Carlos!” he greeted. “I’m Earl Harlan. Thank you for coming. Our table’s right this way, follow me.” Carlos followed, glancing around. There were only a few tables occupied in the whole dining room.

“From what I heard about this place, I had the impression it would be packed.”

“Oh, no. It’s very hard to get a reservation here.”

Carlos laughed. Earl gave him a very serious look. Oh, Lauren’s order to try to like Earl was not going to be hard at all.

“And you don’t take walk-ins?”

“No. Here’s our table!”

They sat, Earl told him what was best on the menu and made polite chitchat, and as soon as their food was put in front of them, said,

“Tell me your secret.”

Carlos’ heart catapulted into his ribcage. He knew. Somehow, this man he’d never met in his life _ knew_. He cast around frantically for something he could say, anything.

“I’m a virgin.”

It was quiet for a considerable amount of time. Earl just looked at him, a slight squint in his sad eyes which now also contained a note of polite confusion. He nodded after several moments.

“Okay. Thank you for expressing that. I just wanted you to tell me how to attract a guy like Cecil. Or are you saying he likes virgins?”

“Oh. _ Oh._” A lot of things made more sense. And he could breathe again. “You’re interested in _ Cecil. _Can we just say I was kidding about the other thing?”

“Were you?”

“No, Earl!” He closed his eyes. Try to like Earl Harlan. He had nice eyebrows. A kind, somber face. Decent taste in men. That look he’d given Carlos when he’d laughed earlier. “Anyway, I don’t think I’d be much help in that area.”

“Why not?” Earl asked. “Is it because you like him too? I kind of thought you didn’t.”

“You don’t even know me! I like him just fine. But I don’t know if I’ve _ attracted _ him. We’re just working on something together.”

“Oh.” Earl tapped something out on his phone. “So I should be less aware.”

“Are you making a note?”

“It’s probably a good tip. I have been told I am too aware of everything, including myself. I bet you have never had that problem.”

“I’m not unaware!” Carlos crossed his arms over his chest. “I am a scientist. It is my job to observe.”

Earl shrugged. “Well then, you must be observing the wrong things.”

Carlos frowned. He must be observing the wrong things. That felt too true, and probably in a way Earl hadn’t meant it.

At least the food was good.

“Do you think you could put in a good word for me?” Earl asked. “I really think we could have something. And it would let him know you’re not interested.”

“Yeah, Earl Harlan. I could do that.” It wasn’t technically a lie, and it seemed like the answer that was least likely to lead to him being forced into it.

“Thank you. Please do.” Damn it. “It would mean a lot.”

“Sure.” He only got a few more bites in before the order took hold. He stood up, cursing his curse for being so immediate, when Earl had_ clearly _ not meant for Carlos to put in a good word for him right smack in the middle of their dinner. “I’m going to the bathroom,” he announced.

Cecil answered on the second ring. “Carlos! Weren’t you supposed to be with Earl right now? Do you need someone to come save you?”

“No, yeah, I am. Earl’s—great.” He leaned up against the wall next to the urinal, which was filled with ice. This really was a nice restaurant.

“Oh. Well, good.”

“Yeah, he’s um, a nice guy. Very self-aware, at least according to him. Good eyebrows. An incredible sense of humor, and by incredible I mean possibly nonexistent, which is kind of amazing if you think about it.”

“Glad it’s going so well,” Cecil said, sounding distinctly not glad, and Carlos realized what he was saying.

“I mean—for you! A nice guy for you. He’s not interested in me at all. He—he likes you.” Was Earl onto something, or was Carlos only hearing a pout in Cecil’s voice because Earl had put that thought in his head? And if Earl was right, how did he know? Had Cecil told him?

“What?” Now all he heard in Cecil’s voice was confusion.

“Yeah. He wants to… date you, presumably. Go on a date. I guess.”

“He told you that he likes me?”

“Yeah. And he’s, y’know, a nice guy, so do with that what you will. I mean, he seems nice, admittedly I’ve only spent a very short time with him and I’m sure you know him a lot better than I do, so you know if that’s true or not… Not really sure why my word should carry any weight at all, really.”

The line was quiet for a moment before Cecil asked, “Is that what you want? For me to go on a date with Earl?”

Carlos didn’t even have to think about that. It was an immediate gut reaction. Still, he took a moment to try and process the immediacy of the reaction before responding. “No. I mean, he just asked me to, but I don’t particularly want you to go on a date with Earl Harlan, no.”

“Then I won’t.” There was a curl of warmth in his voice through the phone line that suggested he might be smiling. Carlos held the phone in a vice-like grip to his ear, hugging his torso with his other arm.

“Okay.” 

For a short while, neither of them said anything, just listening to the sound of quiet breathing on the other end. Carlos couldn’t quite help but smile, hand over his face.

“Goodnight, Carlos,” Cecil finally murmured.

“Goodnight.”

Carlos tried to wipe the smile off his face so he wouldn’t look like a weirdo coming out of the bathroom.

After dinner, which went smoothly even though Carlos felt a little bad that his putting in a good word for Earl had had the opposite of Earl’s intended effect (although maybe not as bad as he should’ve felt), he headed back to the motel. Lauren was parking her car just as he pulled up. She drove a station wagon, like a mom with no kids. At least, he didn’t think she had any kids. Certainly not here.

She seemed excited to see him as she slammed the door shut. “Hey, you look nice! How’d the date go?”

“Wasn’t a date. He was never interested in me.”

“Oh.” She cocked her head, but then perked up again. “Anyway, guess where I just came from!”

He thought about that. “The… bank? I actually have no idea where you go on a daily basis.”

“City Hall! Remember the things that were in the works? I just got everything cleared, and I’m officially running for mayor!”

Carlos blinked. “Of Night Vale?”

“Of Night Vale!”

“Alright, there’s definitely no way I would have guessed that.” Lauren was practically bouncing, she seemed so excited. “Don’t you have to, y’know, be a citizen of a place to run for mayor of it? At the very least?” He wasn’t really sure what the protocol would be, since most towns he had been to before didn’t grant citizenship.

“Nope! I checked. Nothing in the law. There’s actually no set qualifications for running for mayor, at all.”

But they had very detailed regulations on who could and couldn’t obtain a license to play the harmonica. Of course. “Why would you want to be mayor of Night Vale anyway? I thought you didn't like this place, you called it godforsaken.”

Lauren smiled sweetly. “If I said something like that, I’m sure it was just a momentary slip of the tongue, and I didn’t mean that it’s a bad place. Only that it’s in a very literal sense forsaken by God.”

Uh.

“Anyway, that just means it can stand to be improved! And I think the publicity of running for mayor will really help promote my business.”

“Your orange business?”

“Among other things. And even if only a few people vote for me, it’s not like I have any opposition. The town doesn’t have a mayor!”

“I guess.”

She hit the clicker on her car key. “I think I could be really good for this town.”

“So you _ genuinely _ want to be mayor,” he checked.

“Mmhm! Well, goodnight Carlos!” She stepped up onto the sidewalk with a jaunty wave. “Tell everyone to vote for me!”

The door of the motel swung closed behind her.

Oh. Oh, _ shit. _

He turned on the spot with a groan and headed down the street. A woman and her child were walking in the direction of the Moonlite All-Nite Diner.

“Hey, vote for Lauren Mallard, mayor!” he called. They ignored him. A man came out of the place next door, which looked like some kind of arcade.

“Vote Lauren Mallard, mayor!”

“Mayor?”

“Yeah…” Carlos hurried past him. The ache in his head returned after only a moment. This wasn’t enough. He would have to keep going. He needed to tell _ everyone. _ How could he tell everyone?

While he stood there, his symptoms were only getting worse. He pulled out his phone and dialed Crystal’s number. Carlos hadn’t contacted his sister to counteract an order in years, but this was too much.

The phone didn’t even ring. The line just made a clicking sound and went dead. He tried again, with the same result.

“No…” His stomach dropped, and he wasn’t sure if it was due to the curse or the sense of dread. “No, no…” He tried to double-check that he’d hit the right contact, but by this point he could barely see the screen. He was going to throw up.

He had an idea, and looked up a different number, hoping his fingers were hitting close enough to the right keys for his phone to figure out what he meant. The pain subsided.

“Night Vale Community Radio, this is Dana Cardinal!”

“Hi Dana, it’s Carlos. Is the show going on right now?”

“Oh hi, Carlos! It is, yes. We just got started. Did you want to call in?”

“Is that a thing people do?”

“It sure is.”

“Well then, I guess so. Yes.”

“I’ll put you through.”

She hadn’t even asked what he wanted to say. There were a few clicks, a pause, and then Cecil’s smooth voice.

“Listeners, we have a very welcome surprise: Carlos the scientist is calling in! It’s good to hear from you, Carlos! You’re on the air. Oh, I want to be sure to tell you while we have you, since I know you don’t listen to the show, about the disappearances that have been reported! Several postal workers, and a few non-postal workers, have gone missing. I know you were interested in that whole thing with the post office.”

“Wha—really? They’re just missing?”

“Yes! Oh, also, we’re having a party Sunday night to celebrate Night Vale Community Radio’s founding. Of course, we don’t actually know when it was founded, if it _ was _actually founded at some point and not just inherited from the old gods, so we make sure to celebrate on a different day every year. It’s going to be held on the roof of the station, and I’m sure I speak for all of us here at Night Vale Community Radio when I say it would be a real pleasure if you wanted to drop by.”

“Well—thank you.” He could hardly focus on Cecil’s words, his symptoms starting back up. “Cecil, I apologize in advance for what I’m about to say, I know your opinion on—” His head swooped with dizziness, and he hurried up. “I wanted to let your listeners know that Lauren Mallard has declared her candidacy for Night Vale mayor, and to tell everyone to go out and vote for her… um, I don’t know when election day is or anything, but. Yeah.” He let out a long breath, eyes closed, his head finally clear. He did it. “Uh, the view expressed in that statement does not necessarily reflect that of Night Vale Community Radio,” he added.

The line was quiet for several moments. Carlos was really not Lauren’s biggest fan right now. “Was that what you called in to say?” Cecil finally asked.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Well,” Cecil said, his tone completely professional, “thank you for calling. I hope you have a good night.”

“Right.” Carlos stared at the pavement, feeling inexplicably terrible. The line went dead and then came back to life with Dana’s voice.

“Huh. Interesting message. I thought you must be calling in to talk about something scientific.”

“Yeah, that would’ve been good, Dana.” Just a nice reminder that he hadn’t made any scientific breakthroughs whatsoever. And now there’d been _ disappearances. _

“Well. Hope to see you at the party on Sunday. I’m making punch, or at least the version of it that exists before someone spikes it with alcohol.”

“Sounds good. I’ll see if I can make it. I’m, uh, not sure.” He had some things to figure out. If he couldn’t contact his sister, that potentially changed a lot.

“Okay, well, stop by if you can!”

As soon as he hung up, he sunk down until he was sitting on the sidewalk, hunched against the wall of what looked to be a convenience store, and opened up his recent calls. The last two before NVCR showed Crystal’s little smiling icon. It was the right number. He tried it one more time, with no luck. Had she changed her number? He typed out a text that read ‘test,’ and it immediately failed sending.

He tried her boyfriend. It didn’t ring, either. He started randomly hitting numbers in his contacts. Nothing. But the call to NVCR had gone through, so his phone wasn’t just broken. Was it crazy to think it might only work with phones in Night Vale?

The only contacts he had in this town were Cecil and Lauren, and he didn’t want to call either of them right now. He looked up the number for the diner, since it was open all night, and dialed.

It rang. Carlos hung up, missing the first two times from his finger trembling.

He was alone. Completely defenseless against anything anyone might tell him to do. He always had a certain amount of anxiety going into any day, but he comforted himself in the back of his mind that if it really came down to the wire, he did have _ some _ recourse if he was given an absolutely unacceptable order and could reasonably get away long enough to make a phone call. Like with the bullies in junior high.

But now he was truly on his own. It didn’t even feel safe to still be out here on the street, but he couldn’t make himself move. He pulled his knees up to his chest and tried to breathe more normally.

He could leave Night Vale. But what if Cecil actually could break his curse? How could he bear to leave without finding out? And he’d hate to leave him just when… well, he didn’t know what exactly might be happening with Cecil, but it felt like maybe something. The potential for something, at least. Or it had before he’d called in to make a stupid political message on his show.

But maybe it was best not to try to turn it into more. Certainly, it was. There was good reason why he didn’t date, after all. Maybe now was a good time to remove himself.

To just disappear, like a coward. He could leave for a short while, find Crystal and bring her back, keep her close until the curse had been broken.

But she had a job and a boyfriend. He couldn’t make her stay here indefinitely.

Well. He couldn’t do anything right away, anyway. Since he was physically able to, he had to stop by the station party on Sunday at Dana’s request, so that ruled out skipping town at least until then. Maybe he could just hole up in his motel room until then, and hope that nothing horrible happened at the party.

Knowing that there wasn’t anything he could do right now actually made him feel a bit less panicked. He inhaled slowly, counting to six, going through his ritual breathing exercises, then hauled himself up off the pavement and finally made his way back to his bed.


End file.
